


Elsewhere

by harper_m



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 12:06:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 95,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2067543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harper_m/pseuds/harper_m
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Avi Beauvais and Erika Rutherford find themselves on a mission to put down the same vengeful spirit, they decide to ignore old feuds and hunt monsters together for a little while. This doesn't mean the past is forgotten, especially since an unknown enemy is lurking there with evil intent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've worked on this for four years, off and on. Almost all of the characters share traits with family members or friends. This is, in many ways, a love letter to the things I love most about them. The universe the story inhabits is an homage to the first 3 seasons of Supernatural, which I view as the best ones, but the characters and the story stands alone. I've put together a cast so you can see the physical inspiration for the characters, which can be found at http://oi60.tinypic.com/10eq0xj.jpg .
> 
> Many thanks to lettersandsodas for feedback and revision though ultimately any mistakes and foibles belong to me. 
> 
> This work falls under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons Copyright, which offers all kinds of freedom as long as you play nice.

She’s being pulled violently down the rough wooden floor of the hallway. The edges of uneven and warped boards are digging into her skin; she’ll have a mass of bruises if she manages to live through this. She’s got to force herself to dig in her pocket instead of reaching out to claw at the wall because there’s nothing but darkness in front of her and she’s hurtling toward it. Her assailant’s grip is cold, a hard iron band just above the edge of her boots, and she knows that she’s only got about five more seconds before she goes ass first down a flight of rickety wooden stairs and down into the cellar.

It’s only her back-up container of salt, something she keeps with her at all times for almost superstitious reasons. She’s not even sure that it’s going to be enough, and she can’t quite manage to keep her grip steady long enough to catch it. She can feel the plastic slipping against her fingers, the ridges slick, and starts to brace herself for the coming impact just when it seems to magically fly right into her palm.

Her hand closes hard around the container, and she brings it to her chest, struggling to get it open. The top flies off; she can see the cellar doorway looming ahead, which means she’s only got a second to make this happen. She draws her arm back, wincing as her calf scrapes hard against the side of the door frame, and throws.

There’s a boom, loud enough that her ears start ringing immediately. It’s not what she did. She knows that, but whatever it was, she still slides to a halt with her legs splayed halfway over the edge of the stairs. She’s breathing hard, adrenalin mixing with actual exhaustion, but she ignores that as she pushes to her feet. Whatever just happened was absolutely not normal. Spirits dissipate when hit by salt. They don’t explode.

She’s scrambling backward, because no matter what this creature is – and she’d been absolutely sure it was a spirit, but now she doesn’t know – it’s going to be back. Her shotgun is in the front parlor, knocked from her hands in a fight with something she couldn’t see, and she’ll feel a hell of a lot better with it in her possession.

“Hey.”

The word comes from behind her. She spins, already lashing out, and her fist connects with something that’s definitely skin and bone. She follows up the punch with a running tackle, shoulder lowered, driving whatever it is behind her into the wall. She hears the crack of plaster, and a fine dust of it fills the air, so the groan she hears from whoever or whatever this is is broken by a choked cough.

“Fuck. Could you just chill out for a minute here,” the thing says, and with an explosion of motion, Avi’s suddenly sent backward, crashing into the wall behind her. It’s too dark in the house to see well, but it registers that the thing she’s seeing is probably human. A human with a gun, she realizes, putting the earlier blast in context; the fact that the gun in question is pointed down to the floor and not at her is the only thing that keeps her from springing forward again.

Her heart is beating so loudly that she almost can’t hear above the noise of it, but there’s something nagging at her, a half trapped memory waiting to spring free.

“Who are you?” she asks sharply.

“Who are you?”

There’s something about that voice, vaguely snide with a small side-helping of arrogant, that gives it away.

“Erika,” she says flatly, pushing off the wall.

She hears the flick of a lighter, and the hallway is filled with a soft glow. The light flickers off of the planes of Erika Rutherford’s face, and even though some part of her is pleased by the trail of blood she can see dribbling out of Erika’s nose and onto her upper lip, she still can’t hold back a sigh of frustration.

“Guess I saved your ass, Avi.” Erika smirks, wiping at her nose. The move smears the still dripping blood so that it feathers across her cheek. It gives the impression that she’s been interrupted halfway through an application of battle paint and with it, in the still flickering light, she looks unconsciously intimidating as she brings the barrel of her sawed off shotgun up to rest on her shoulder. “How about a thanks?”

“Why are you here?”

Even in the faint light, Avi can see Erika roll her eyes. It breaks the illusion, brings her back from intimidating to annoying. “I guess that expectation of gratitude I had going was setting the bar a little high.” She pauses, giving Avi a final chance before continuing. “Why am I here? Uh, because of the vengeful, murdering spirit. You know, that thing that was about to drag your ass down into the cellar and hack you into pieces.”

“I had things under control.”

“Yeah. Clearly.”

There’s a moment of silence, where both women content themselves with glaring at one another.

Erika breaks contact first, quirking her head to the side and squinting down into the darkness of the cellar. “Does this strike you as odd in any way?”

Avi’s answer is a reluctant half-agreement. “You mean the silence?”

“Well, there’s that, and then there’s the sudden and complete absence of supernatural activity of any kind. Last I checked, spirits didn’t take breaks between rounds.”

Avi nods, expression troubled. Her hands clench into fists; the movement reminds her of her distinct lack of defensive weapons, and she tenses, anxious. “Yeah, it does.”

They hear it first as a distant rattling. Broken pieces of china start to vibrate inside the cabinets. Pieces of rotting furniture begin to splinter and the floorboards begin to rattle.

Erika frowns. “I get the distinct impression that we should start to worry.”

It takes less than a half a minute for the noises to add up to a deafening cacophony.

“Worry would definitely be appropriate,” Erika shouts over the din, shoulders hunching protectively at a particularly loud crack. Plaster from the ceiling showers down over them as a fissure rips through it, and Avi thinks of her shotgun left abandoned in the front parlor. “I think someone’s angry.”

“We’ve got to find the remains,” Avi shouts back, any animosity momentarily forgotten.

“What?”

“The remains,” Avi shouts again, as loudly as she can. “The cellar. We’ve got to get to the cellar.”

She isn’t sure whether or not Erika hears her but she is sure she’s following. They rattle together down the staircase. Midway, Avi feels more than hears the ominous crack of rotten wood under her foot and before she can react, the stair gives way. Her knee folds as she loses her balance; she can feel the ragged edges of the wood scraping her skin through the inadequate protection of her jeans, and she lurches up, grabbing hold of the wooden railing. Erika skitters to a stop, nearly plowing over her and, after hesitating for a moment, vaults over the railing and onto the hard-packed dirt floor below, hitting hard and feeling the twinge of it in her ankles.

“Where?” she shouts, watching as Avi pulls herself up and out of the hole in the stairs.

The noise is muted now that they’re underground, but the cellar doesn’t feel any safer for it. It’s dark and dank; old tools hang on the walls, creating ominous shapes in the shadows.

Avi stands up straight, looking around the small room. “In the walls. I don’t know where.”

Erika curses. She slings her pack off of her shoulder and pulls it open, digging around until she feels the heft of her flashlight. She pulls it out, the high beam scanning the walls, looking for variations in color or texture. It’s an impossible task. The walls have been washed a streaky, uneven brown by years of dust, mold, and water damage, so she abandons the tactic. Instead, she picks the nearest wall and taps on it with the base of her flashlight, hearing the thunk of a solid space.

She’s made it through an entire wall before she’s unexpectedly thrown halfway across the room. She hits the dirt hard, landing on her back and sliding a few feet. It nearly knocks the wind from her; her head bounces off of the packed dirt floor hard enough that, for a moment, her vision is a washed out darkness.

“Gun,” she hears faintly, urgently, as if from far away. “Erika, your gun.”

Trying to focus, she pats the dirt next to her. The shotgun isn’t in her hands, and she’s not sure where it’s gone. It takes effort to sit up; it’s still hard to breathe, and the impact of skull against floor was hard enough to leave her dizzy. She shakes her head, scans the room quickly, and catches sight of the dull glint of the shotgun’s barrel. Scrambling to her knees, she lunges for it, managing to pull the gun to her and pivot at the same time, so that she sends it to Avi with a two-handed push.

Avi catches it smoothly and extends her arm perpendicular to her body, catching the spirit rushing toward her with a solid blow of rock salt to the chest.

It’s the first time Erika’s really seen the guy she’s been hunting in the non-corporeal flesh. He looks just like the grainy black and white photo she’d seen in archival records, a long, dour face with a fringe of beard along his jaw and nowhere else, the stiff black suit of an old-timey preacher, a certain wiry strength. The main difference, and perhaps the most critical one, is the long, bloody knife in his hand that he used to dismember six women – all of whom, according to the sensational newspaper recountings of the day, he’d judged to be ‘significantly lacking in the correct moral character most natural to a virtuous young lady.’

Asshole.

“Reload,” Avi calls out, snapping the shotgun open and dumping the shell casings. Erika digs into the pockets of her army style jacket, pulling two shells free, and manages to get one in the air to Avi before she sees Avi’s eyes widen.

Avi snatches the shell from the air, jamming it into the shotgun and snapping it shut. She uses one hand to motion to the left, and it takes Erika a second to understand what she’s being told. The gun is up and pointed her way by the time she catches on, so she throws herself to the side just as Avi fires. There’s a stinging burn as the periphery of the blast hits her, sending stray pellets of rock salt to shred through her shirt and dig into her abdomen, and she brushes at them furiously even as the spirit behind her disappears again.

Avi’s grabbing a rusty axe from the wall when she looks up, absently wiping her now bloody palm on her jeans. “There,” Avi shouts, pointing to the space directly behind Erika. “I think it’s guarding the spot.”

She tosses the shotgun Erika’s way and then raises the axe above her head, bringing it down hard. It splinters through rotten wood, revealing an open space, and with a few more hard strikes, she’s made enough of a hole for them to see the bones moldering in the makeshift, dugout cavity.

“Here.” Erika pulls the canister of lighter fluid from her bag by instinct as Avi dumps the contents of a box of salt over the remains. She doesn’t watch as Avi douses the bones; instead, she snaps another two shells into her shotgun just in case.

When she turns her attention back to Avi, the other woman has pulled a lighter out of her pocket and is flicking it to life. Something, a waver to their left, catches her eye, and Erika looks over to see the spirit beginning to materialize again. She raises her shotgun and gets off a blast just seconds after Avi lights the accelerant-soaked remains. Burning the bones is the only sure way to send a spirit into oblivion, where this one clearly deserves to be. Salt meets fire, and the upper torso begins to burn away along with its remains even as the lower part of its body disappears, and Erika gives a satisfied nod.

The two meet in the middle, and suddenly he’s gone.

The house goes silent immediately. Avi and Erika are left looking at one another, both panting, both with slightly pleased smiles on their faces.

“That wasn’t half bad, Beauvais,” Erika says, looking down at the tattered, blood tinged remains of her tee shirt, “except for the part where you shot me.”

“I told you to move.”

There’s no animosity in the ribbing. It’s almost companionable now. Mainly, Erika thinks, because they’re both glad they’re still alive.

And then, Avi says, “Oh shit.”

It becomes obvious why in the next second, as old wood, shot through with dry rot, sparks to life. The fire roars up the side wall in what feels like a split second, and soon it’s racing across the ceiling.

“I think it’s time to go,” Erika says, even as she reaches down to scoop up her bag. They’re up the stairs quickly, hopping over the broken one, but flames are already licking around the doorframe as they push through it and down the hallway, and the growing heat at their backs lets them know that the fire is moving even more quickly through the upper floors.

As they race past the front parlor, Avi skids to a stop. Her shotgun is there, lying in the middle of the floor alongside her bag, and she can’t afford to abandon either. After nearly tripping over the fractured remnants of a chair, she manages to scoop them up; by the time she turns back, fire has licked its way halfway down the hallway. She can hear the creak and groan of old wood giving way in the back of the house followed by a crash as one of the ceiling supports falls to the ground. The whole house is rumbling now and she scrambles back across the room, slipping on rotten splinters of wood and shards of broken glass before slingshotting back into the hallway.

The smoke has gotten thicker. It scorches her lungs, like she’s literally breathing in the fire, and her body is wracked by coughs that bring with them a deep, warning pain. Her eyes start to burn and water, and she considers that maybe the fire is moving faster than she’d thought. It’s eaten its way through the old wallpaper; she can’t even imagine how many things in the house serve as little more than pure tinder, but it’s clear it’s well past time to leave.

Avi stumbles down the front steps and into the yard, nearly plowing over Erika where she stands in the midst of the waist-high grass. Flames are shooting into the night sky now, high and violent; sparks arc off of them , and it would be beautiful if it wasn’t, instead, so horrible. She can’t believe how fast the fire has moved, and can only stand there, panting, aghast at their handiwork.

“We’re arsonists,” she mumbles, hearing the shattering of glass as the heat grows too intense for the few remaining window panes.

“You’re an arsonist,” Erika corrects tiredly, rubbing at stinging eyes. “I had nothing to do with the lighting of any fires.”

“You provided the lighter fluid. I’m pretty sure that makes you an accomplice.”

Avi’s thinking that they should be making their getaway instead of appropriating blame and staring dumbly at the now raging fire when she realizes just how badly this night has gone.

“Oh shit,” she says again, eyes widening as she watches flaming debris from the house gently float through the air.

It’s fall after a dry summer, which makes the tall grass surrounding them on all sides nothing more than kindling.

Erika almost doesn’t want to ask, not after the last time, when those words were precursor to a massive inferno, but it turns out there’s no need.

“Oh shit,” she echoes, because the grass is quickly catching fire.

“We’ve got to get out of here.”

And then, in what Erika is sure is karmic retribution for accidentally kind of participating in starting both a house and a forest fire, she remembers. She’d left her bike parked just alongside the house. It’s on the other side of what is now a rapidly moving wall of flame heading straight their way.

“My bike,” she manages to get out, pointing vaguely in the direction where her little Kawasaki is waiting. Her throat tightens, imagining melting tires and plastic and burning vinyl. She’s only had the bike a year, won in a game of all night poker off of a guy who spent more time looking at her cleavage than looking at his cards, but she loves it. It’s not the newest model, but it’s sporty and dapper, and when she rides it, she feels free. Besides, if it’s gone, she’s minus her one and only set of wheels.

“My truck is over here.” Avi’s already running; the skin on her face is tight from the heat, and she’s pretty sure, or at least hopeful, that there will be fire trucks and emergency vehicles arriving on the scene shortly, even if they are in the middle of nowhere.

The only thing Erika registers about the truck is that it’s old and quite possibly ugly. The door creaks open painfully and the vinyl of the bench seat is cracked, worn, and considerably flatter than she imagines it was when new. It comes to life with a loud roar, the efforts of the engine laborious enough that the whole thing vibrates, but it still seems to run well enough to get them out of there in a hurry. Rocks kick up as Avi throws it into reverse, and they speed backwards down the dirt driveway, the fire growing infinitely smaller in front of them, until she backs onto the dirt county road that runs in front of it, tires squealing as she reverses direction. It’s pitch black; there are no street lights and the area is mostly unpopulated, so the only thing they can really see is the halo of road in front of them.

“We’ve got to call this in,” Avi says worriedly, looking back at the faint glow of the fire. It can barely be seen over the tops of the trees, but she imagines it growing, spreading through the forest in an unstoppable wave, and gets a little nauseous.

“Should we give them our names, too? Tell them to go ahead and run us for warrants?” Erika asks caustically, and she’s pretty sure it’s about to turn into a fight when the faint flicker of red and white lights appears on the road in front of them. The fire truck is probably a mile away, little more than a dot, but Avi feels her gut unclench as it continues to race closer.

“Thank god,” Erika mutters beside her, and Avi feels marginally better knowing she was worried too.

“Speaking of,” Avi begins, “what about your bike?”

“What about it?”

“What did you have on it? Any ID? Anything they can trace?”

“Nothing. I travel light. Most everything I have is in my bag or on my person, and what isn’t, I don’t take with me on a job. The VIN is ground down – if they have the time or inclination, they’ll be able to pull it up, but it’ll lead them to a sleaze bag in Wichita who’ll be able to provide them with what I’m sure would be an extremely accurate artist’s rendering of my cleavage and a fake name.”

“So you’ll be fine.”

Erika shoots Avi a look of disbelief. “What part of fine do you get out of being without transportation? My bike’s probably melted into an avant garde piece of statuary by now.”

“I just mean you have all you need, minus one bike.”

“Yeah, and minus my clothes and cash.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I stashed all of that in a locker at the bus station. Do you really think I can waltz in there and get my stuff looking like this? You damn near broke my nose. Don’t think I haven’t been tasting blood down the back of my throat since, and my eye’s going to be black.” She pauses, and adds testily, “And then you shot me.”

“It was rock salt, and I told you to move.”

“Yeah, well, I’m still bleeding. Besides, we should probably shower and change, unless you’re dying to get arrested for that small fire you might remember setting not so long ago.”

They’re getting closer to the town proper. There are street lights now, and the houses come more and more frequently. There are other cars on the road, their lights shining into the truck as they pass, and a quick glance is enough to convince Avi that what she’s about to do is right. The absolute unwillingness she feels to do it only convinces her more.

“I’ve got a motel room,” she says stonily. “We’ll get you cleaned up, get some rest, and I’ll take you to get your stuff tomorrow morning.”

She doesn’t expect, nor does she get, a thanks.

******

The motel is lined with pink neon in an ill-fated attempt at a tropical theme. They’re in the middle of Tennessee, which makes the décor all the more confusing, but Avi’s never really picked places to stay based on aesthetics. It’s clean enough and takes cash, which makes it perfect.

“Classy,” Erika mutters; Avi pretends to ignore her.

She’s got a room at the back, asked for specifically. It’s always less crowded there, and she appreciates the anonymity. In her line of work, odd hours are the norm, and she often returns bloodied and bruised. The fewer people who see, the better.

She doesn’t like the feeling of having someone at her back, so it’s almost a relief when she gets the door open and they’re both inside, until she realizes that this means that she’s trapped in a small motel room with Erika Rutherford, and without spirits or fires to divert their attention from one another, a hostile chill grows quickly.

“You can take the shower first,” Avi says finally, breaking the silence between them.

She spends the next 20 minutes wondering what she was thinking, bringing Erika back to the room with her. They’ve never really gotten along. Upon first meeting, she’d been predisposed not to like Erika, and Erika certainly hadn’t helped matters.

She’s ready when the door opens again, revealing Erika standing there, long reddish blonde hair wet and combed straight back from her face. She’s wearing one of the tiny hotel towels, and Avi can see that Erika had been right earlier. There’s a smudge of black under her right eye. It’s not going to swell shut, but it’s not going to look pretty, either.

“PJs, first aid kit, and clothes for tomorrow,” she says without prompting. “The underwear’s new.”

She’s in the shower long enough to hope that Erika’s had plenty of time to change, dress the wound she keeps hearing about, and turn in for the night. She’s mostly lucky, since Erika is in bed, though she’s propped up against the headboard, remote in hand, lazily flicking through the few channels the motel offers. Avi tries not to be self-conscious as she drops her towel and quickly pulls a tee shirt over her head, the end draping down far enough to cover everything, but when she looks up, Erika is looking right back at her.

“You look like you took a hell of a beating,” Erika notes, eyes drifting down to the multitude of scrapes and scratches clustered just above Avi’s ankles, and Avi catalogues her wounds. There’s a small cut on her cheek. She’s not sure how she got it, but it looks more like a scratch than anything else, so she figures it won’t call too much attention to her. She’s bruised, too, though that’s harder to see under her dark skin, but she sinks slowly to the bed. The adrenalin’s worn off, leaving exhaustion and a bone deep ache in every joint.

“You should talk.”

Erika’s hand moves unconsciously to her eye. “Yeah. Thanks for that, by the way.”

Avi chooses to ignore her. She rolls onto her side, pulls the covers up around her shoulders, and closes her eyes, pretending to sleep until sleep actually comes.

The last thing she hears before she drifts off is a soft, “Kind of like old times, huh, bug?”


	2. Chapter 2

18 Years Earlier

“You gotta be patient, Avi.”

Beau Beauvais’ voice bears the stamp of more than one generation of Creole infused French and the southern countryside. His words carry their intermixed influence, and sometimes Avi wishes she sounded more like him. Her accent is light. It’s still detectable but much fainter, and sometimes it feels like they’re not the same, not even the same family, as if he’s from an old world and she’s from a new one. Her mother is Creole as well, with a far stronger African ancestry than her father and, also, with the superstitions and the skills of the Voudoun, but her mother doesn’t live with them. She’d left Natchez and, in fact, Natchitoches Parrish completely, two years before, returning to New Orleans and to the bosom of her family, but Avi had chosen to stay with her Daddy. 

Sometimes Avi forgets what she sounds like and panics, like everything she knows about her is going to be gone forever, even if her mother is just a phone call away.

They’re out on the river in her father’s small, flat bottomed metal boat. The sun is beating down on them and she’s slick with sweat, but there’s a cooler between them full of Cokes in glass bottles and the sandwiches they’re going to have for lunch and just the thought is like air conditioning. They’ve been fishing for most of the morning, and they’ve got six medium crappie in the net bag dangling off the side of the boat, but her Daddy’s got a taste for catfish so they’re waiting.

“Granddaddy Catfish, he knows,” Beau says with a mischievous smile, deliberately playing up his accent and stroking a non-existent beard. “He’s lived a long life, a good life. He sees the worm on the end of my hook, and he knows it’s not a good trade. It would make him a good lunch, yes, but then he’d make me a good lunch.”

She holds back a giggle, because he rubs his belly, grinning at her, and she can picture him at their table, his plate bearing nothing but the bones of a stripped down catfish as he pushes his chair back and rests his hands on his stomach, content.

“It is good to be cautious,” he continues, and his tone turns less jovial and more serious because he can’t help the way the darkness seeps in. “You know there are bad things in this world, Avigail. They may come at you with the face of a monster or they may not. They may talk pretty words and tell you sweet lies, and your heart and your head and your gut may be fooled.” He touches each in turn as he lists them, and she watches, entranced, as always, at one of her father’s lessons.

“Then how can you know, Daddy?” she asks, thinking hard to try and find the loophole. She swats lazily at the annoying buzz of a fly and gives her fishing pole a quick jerk, making the bait dance in the water below. “What’s left?”

“You won’t always know the truth of everything, baby girl, but you’ll always know the things I teach you.”

She nods her head solemnly. Her father has already taught her many things, each of them important. She knows the truth of their family, that they are hunters, and that hunters know things others do not. They know things others don’t want to know.

According to her Daddy, hunters become hunters in one of two basic ways: they are born into it or they come to it by trauma. Go back far enough, he’s told her, and even families that have been hunters for generations come to it by trauma originally, and once in the life, can’t escape it. It is a great burden – and when he tells her this, there’s always a heaviness in his eyes that makes something inside her seize up – but one which must be carried. They keep back the dark so the rest of the world can live in the light.

She’s young enough to wonder innocently why this burden falls to them.

“It is what fate has chosen,” her Daddy tells her the one time she asks, and though he doesn’t say the words unkindly, there is a hint of steel behind them. “You’ll understand why one day.”

The moment of seriousness passes, and if it wasn’t so hot, the gentle rocking of the boat would put her to sleep. She kicks off her shoes and wiggles her toes against the hot metal, contemplates dipping her legs into the water, then remembers her Daddy’s admonishments about cottonmouths, a serious warning interspersed with playful threats that the catfish will think her toes to be worms and eat them.

“What do you think?” her father asks, giving his own pole a tiny little jerk. “Have we used up all our luck for the day?”

Avi starts to nod her head yes, because this is what her father always says when he’s gotten tired of fishing. It means that soon they’ll be paddling the boat back to shore. They’ll pull it up on the bank, and she’ll find the perfect shade tree while her father carries over the cooler. The Cokes will be ice cold, and he’ll pop the top off of one of them and hand it to her, and half of it will be gone before she even unwraps her sandwich.

“It’s all gone,” she says with a smile, and starts to pull her line in when something pulls back against it. Her mouth opens wide in a surprised ‘O’, and her Daddy looks over at her and laughs, because she’s got her bamboo cane up high in the air, and dangling on the end of the line is a big, fat catfish, flailing wildly. She swings it over to him and he catches the fish deftly, cursing softly as the top fin digs into his hand. He has to move quickly to avoid the catfish’s whiskers, sharp enough to cut, but he’s had a lifetime of practice. The fish gets added to their bag, and once they’ve eaten their sandwiches and drank all of the Cokes in the cooler, he’ll pull the bag from the water and put the fish on ice.

“Look at that,” he says, smiling at her proudly. “You’ve caught dinner.”

The day isn’t over. They spend the afternoon scaling and gutting the fish, and as the sun begins to set, her Daddy takes the catfish out of the fridge, dips it in buttermilk, and dredges it in cornmeal and flour.   
He slips it into the pan he’d used to fry bacon for their breakfast that morning, the one with a thick coating of bacon fat that melts, again, under the heat. In another pan, he’s been slow-cooking potatoes he’s peeled and sliced into rectangular strips. In the bottom of the pan is a healthy scoop of lard, and she sits at the table, breathing in the way it all smells, rich and earthy. While he cooks the fish, he fries the hush puppies to go with it, so that when everything is done, it’s done together.

The potatoes are browned and crunchy, the hush puppies light and peppery, and the catfish succulent and flaky. He gives her half, pulling the meat from the bones on one side and leaving a side for himself, and they eat and talk and laugh; he mimics the look on her face when she pulled the catfish from the water, exaggerating her shock, and she fights back with a pantomime of his pleased expression at the sight of it on his plate. She goes to bed full and happy, with skin that still burns from the sun, and tries not to let thoughts of her mother and how much she sometimes misses her cross her mind.

*******

Her father wakes her before daybreak the following morning, a grim look on his face.

“We’ve got to go, baby girl.”

She knows what that means. His bag is already packed, and he cooks breakfast while she takes her shower and gathers her clothes. He wants them to get on the road as soon as possible, so he wraps their sausage biscuits in paper towels and fills a thermos with coffee. He pours her a glass of orange juice, makes her drink it before they go, and watches as she chews her Flintstones vitamin. She wants to tell him she’s too old for them now, at 12, but it’s one of the many things he thinks of as important to parenting, this morning ritual he is assured will provide her with the things she misses out on because he doesn’t know better.

She climbs into his truck, a 1979 Chevy Silverado, black with chrome stripes. It was born the same year as you, he tells her often, and he loves it so much that sometimes she teases him that he had two babies that year.

They stop at the small convenience store on the way out of town to fill up with gas. Her Daddy lets her get another Coke from the cooler in the back, and she pops the top on the bottle opener attached to the counter at the front. Their cooler is back, packed again with sandwiches, and he grabs a few other things – candy bars, chips, and a bunch of bananas – so that there’s a paper bag on the floorboard by her feet when they start off again.

“Your Uncle Etienne called this morning,” he tells her later, after he’s eaten the two sausage biscuits he packed from himself. They’ve got the windows rolled down to take advantage of the cool early morning air, so he has to raise his voice to be heard above the noise. “He’s heard from a friend that there’s something very bad happening in a town in Colorado, so we will have a very long drive ahead of us.”

“What kind of very bad?” she asks around bites of her own biscuit.

“The kind where people die and then come back to life.”

Vampires, she thinks, taking another bite of her biscuit, which is not all bad. Vampires are, after all, her Daddy’s specialty.

“It will be nice when you are old enough to drive,” he says, reaching forward to flick on the radio. It’s constantly tuned to an AM station that offers nothing but commentary on sports, and she’s used to the drone of excited or angry callers in the background. Kickoff to football season is only a few months away, which means that most of the talk is evenly divided between speculations on LSU’s chances in the upcoming season and talk of the Saints’ prospects. “Sometimes I would like to be the one who gets to nap against the window. Maybe I will teach you to drive early,” he teases. “There are sure to be back roads between here and Colorado where there is nothing for you to hit.” He pauses thoughtfully before adding, “Or maybe we should wait until we are on our way back if we ever actually want to get there.”

She giggles, and he grins at her; he offers her driving trips in a very serious tone of voice for the rest of the trip, but smiles with each one. They drive straight through the day, stopping infrequently and eating their sandwiches as they go. She finds that there are AM stations all along the way, though they talk about different teams. When there’s no sports radio to be found, her Daddy lets her pick the station, but most of what she finds is country, so she turns it down so that the twin twang of guitar and sad, country voices melds into the background. It gets dark when they’re near Amarillo, Texas, so they find a cheap motel, have dinner at a nearby diner, and go to bed, and she’s glad of the opportunity to get out of the truck and stretch her legs.

They’re back on the road by 6:00 the next morning. She sleeps through the first part of the trip, only waking when they’re near the Colorado state line, and by noon, they’re pulling into La Junta. She sees a sign for Bent’s Old Fort National Historic Site and files the knowledge away for later, wondering if she can convince her father to stop there on their way out of town. She likes those kinds of things, likes standing in places where history has happened and looking at grainy pictures of long forgotten events. He’s usually pretty indulgent; guilt, she thinks, over all of the times he’s pulled her out of school to go on a hunt.

The town is small, the kind of place where strangers stick out immediately. Normally it would be helpful, she thinks, having long ago absorbed lessons about asking subtle questions to local residents interested in her own story. Only here, they’re the strangers, quite clearly different with their dark skin and odd accents, and her Daddy laughs about it when they’re in the truck again, driving around the town aimlessly to try and get a feel for it.

“I think we have flat out shocked ‘em, baby girl,” he says, his eyes deftly taking in street names and landmarks and creating a map of the town in his head.

The town of La Junta isn’t much larger than Natchez, at least when it comes to land. There are a lot more people packed onto it, though. The houses are crammed closer together and there are more cars on the road, so it feels odd, to be in a town that reminds her vaguely of home but to see it bustling with so much more life.

“We hunt the vampire the way the vampire hunts food,” her father says. It’s a lesson he’s imparted before, but each time, Avi listens as if it’s the first. “The vampire’s nature limits its options. It must go out in the darkness and return before daylight. It is true that the vampire can enter a home and slaughter a family in relative peace and quiet, but this is the kind of hunt that will draw attention. In very remote, rural areas, this may be the kind of hunt vampires prefer, but in a town of any size, this is the kind of hunt that will bring destruction to a clan.”

She nods along, watching him closely as he speaks. His eyes are focused forward, still scanning the road, and the determination on his face makes him look hard.

“So the vampire will have several considerations. They hunt best in places where it is not uncommon for strangers to gather and where leaving with someone one has not known long will not be remarked upon. Humans sense the danger in vampires. There is something within a human that recognizes a superior predator and fears it, so the vampire finds situations that capitalize on this fear. It is easiest for them in places like bars and nightclubs, where humans’ inhibitions are lowered and fear gets lost in a mix of feelings – excitement, sexual arousal, the desire to escape the burdens of everyday life. There is a reason why history paints the vampire as seductive.”

He falls silent for a moment, but Avi knows he’s not finished. No matter that it’s familiar, she doesn’t like to see her father like this, with the darkness creeping over him. It makes her feel as cold inside as he begins to look.

“The vampire blends best in larger cities. To be in a place this small… there must be a reason. To be in a place this small courts detection. It is when they’re on the move that vampires are most vulnerable.”

Even at 12, Avi can see the logic in that. She doesn’t know the name for it yet, sanctuary, but she knows what it’s like to be away from home, staying in motel rooms and never knowing what the next day is going to bring.

That night, her father hugs her close and presses a kiss to her forehead. “You keep the door locked, baby girl,” he says, sitting on the bed so that he is closer to eye level with her. “You open it for no one except me. If I’m not back by morning, you call your Uncle Etienne. Do not come looking for me by yourself.”

She always tries hard not to cry, but it’s hard to keep the tears from her eyes. But, it’s hard enough on her father, she knows, leaving her there alone while he works, so she blinks them back and schools her face into a blank, stoic mask. 

“It will be fine,” he says, picking up the cloth bag sitting beside him on the bed. She hears the clank and rattle of the wooden stakes as they shift inside of it, the sound somehow reassuring. She helped her father carve those stakes, and the tips are razor sharp. “And you…” he pauses, smiling at her affectionately, “you don’t stay up too late. Maybe tomorrow we’ll teach you to drive.”

******

It’s nearly impossible to sleep, of course. Her father is a big man, right at six feet tall and a solid 200 pounds of muscle, but that’s human strength. Supernatural strength is another thing all together. She’s seen him come limping home after a hunt, bleeding and bruised. She’s seen him with a broken arm and a dislocated shoulder, and she’s already good with the first aid kit. He’s been teaching her how to sew stitches, having her knit together the ragged edges of thick cloth, and she dreads the day when he comes home with a wound he can’t tend himself and she has to do it for real.

She hears the voices at 2:00 in the morning, low and intense. The scrape of a key in the lock follows, and she jumps out of bed, grabbing the shotgun her father has already taught her how to shoot and holding it close to her as she slides alongside the door. He has taught her this, to always be ready, and it is odd, she knows, for a father’s eyes to gleam with pride when he is met at the door by the business end of a shotgun held by his daughter, but her Daddy has never been like other fathers.

The door opens as far as the chain will let it. In the dim light from outside, Avi can see her father’s profile, but he’s not alone. She can see that too, and so she edges the tip of the shotgun through the crack and asks, “Has it been a good night, Daddy?”

It’s their special code, and when he answers in the all clear, “As good as can be expected,” she pushes the door closed and unhooks the chain’s latch. When she opens the door again, her father comes stumbling through it, bearing the sagging weight of another man with him. The stranger lands on her father’s bed, and even though they’ve yet to turn on the room’s single lamp, Avi can already tell that he’s bleeding.

“Close the door, Avigail,” her father says, and when she turns, it’s the first time she sees her.

The girl is a wisp, painfully thin, blonde, and trembling. She looks as pale as a ghost; her eyes are wide, blue, and absolutely terrified. There’s blood on her shirt too, and some on her hands, and she’s rooted to the spot, staring without blinking at the man laid out on the bed.

“Damn fool,” her Daddy says, and Avi whips around to face him. He’s always cautious about that, ready to introduce her to the world of monsters but unwilling to curse in front of her, so if he’s being careless, then it must be bad. “He’s going to need stitching.”

“It’s not that bad,” the man on the bed groans, pushing up onto his elbows, and Avi is startled. She’d thought him half dead, with the way his feet had been dragging the ground as her Daddy had drug him into the room.

“It is that bad,” Beau replies angrily, shaking his head. “You could have gotten us both killed. Stupide.”

Killed is the only part of that sentence Avi hears. The man on the bed, whoever he is, has put her Daddy in danger. Her eyes narrow and she feels her heart harden; whoever this stranger is, she wants him gone.

“And what were you thinking, leaving the girl in the car like that?” Beau continues, digging agitatedly into their medical supplies kit and pulling out a pair of surgical scissors. He cuts through the man’s shirt without hesitation, pulling the ragged bits to the side to expose a long, bloody gash that runs from his collarbone down to his ribs, cutting a wide diagonal across his chest. “She’s a child.”

“She knows how to take care of herself,” the man grunts. He’s starting to shiver and his jaw is clenched; Avi knows enough to know he’s going into shock.

“Stupide,” her father repeats. He’s pulled out latex gloves and snapped them on, used an alcohol wipe on a thick, curved needle, and cut a long length of nylon string. “This is going to hurt like the very devil.”

He goes about the task unceremoniously, sinking the needle into flesh and working quickly. The man on the bed bucks and strains, letting out a hoarse shout as the string is pulled tight, bringing the gaping flesh back together. She hears an echoing sound in return, softer and higher pitched, from behind her, and turns to see the girl watching anxiously, tears streaming down her cheeks.

The girl rushes forward when the moaning stops, small hands beating at Beau’s shoulders.

“It’s okay,” he says soothingly, stopping what he’s doing long enough to turn to her, expression soft and compassionate. “He’s passed out from the pain, is all. He will be okay.”

Avi will never forget the way the girl glares at her father, hatred thick in her eyes.

******

“It was a stupid, risky move,” Beau says softly. The stranger is stitched and clean and sleeping soundly. The girl sits beside him on the bed, holding his hand and glaring at Avi and her father. “He had been asking around about strangers, about the murders, same as me, so I held back. I watched him, tried to figure out his play. He is hunting them too, I think, but I don’t know why. And they set a trap for him, left an obvious trail that he could not resist following. There were three of them, two men and one woman. I was not ready for a fight. There was no tactical advantage to it, going onto their turf and playing by their rules, but I could not leave him there at their mercy.”

Beau has not returned from the fight unscathed either. His left eye is nearly swollen shut and his lip is cracked and bleeding. He favors one side, protecting what he thinks is a bruised, possibly cracked, rib.

“With the element of surprise, I was able to kill one of them. The younger male. But, they are fast and they are strong, baby girl. The other male, he is old. I could feel it.”

He leans back in the chair, wincing at the movement, and looks over at the man and the girl once again. He sighs; it’s early morning now, and the faint brightness of first light is starting to sift into the motel room. She can see his pain more clearly now, etching lines into his face.

They’ve put the girl in a clean shirt, one of Avi’s. She’d disappeared into the bathroom for less than a few minutes, using water from the tap to wash the blood off of her hands and arms. When she returns, it’s in Avi’s ‘LSU Tigers’ tee, an old hand-me-down Beau had worn as a teen, which means it’s almost ancient. It’s been washed so many times the once deep, royal purple has lost its depth, and the yellow lettering is cracked. It’s one of Avi’s favorites, and she hadn’t parted with it easily, but a stern look from her father had prompted her to hand it over.

“The vampires, they know we are here now. It’s not a good situation.”

“Call Uncle Etienne,” Avi urges, sure that she doesn’t want her Daddy to face these vampires alone, not with the element of surprise gone.

Her Uncle Etienne lives in Jackson, Mississippi. It’ll take him a full day of driving to get there, but she’s sure the wait is worth it.

“We may not have time,” Beau says quietly. “They could have tracked us here. They could be planning an attack. We need to be prepared. We need to move. I cannot worry about all of it, not with a half-dead man and two children here.”

“Leave him,” Avi urges, eyeing the duo on the bed coldly, remembering what her father had said earlier. Killed. “She can take care of him.”

Beau makes a sound of disappointment. “We don’t abandon our allies, Avigail. This man is one of us, a hunter, and he’s wounded and without defense. Would you want him to leave me, were the situation reversed? To abandon you and I and leave you to fend off any threats that may come?”

“I could take care of you, Daddy,” Avi vows fiercely, her slim shoulders stiffening with resolve.

He chuckles gently, and reaches out a finger to tap the tip of her nose. She ducks away, embarrassed but also smiling. “I know you think you can, baby girl, but I wouldn’t want that for you. I’m sure he wouldn’t want that for his girl, either, no matter how stupid he may be.”

“I can hear you,” the girl sneers. It’s the first time she’s spoken, and Avi is startled by the sound of her voice. It’s reedy with tension but steady. Assured. Angry.

“And it’s good you can. Now you know the situation,” Beau replies calmly. “It is serious. We cannot stay here. We must move and regroup.”

“How?” Avi scoffs. “Do we put them in the bed of the truck?”

“Avi,” her father chastises.

“I can drive,” the girl says stiffly.

“What’s your name, girl?”

The girl just stares at him, refusing to speak.

Beau shakes his head at her. “Are you old enough to drive?”

The girl remains defiantly silent.

“I need sleep,” Beau says tiredly, the options before him few. “Wake me by noon. We’ll discuss this then.”

******

It’s awkward, until Avi drifts off to sleep as well. She’s slumped over in her chair when the faint snick of the door closing disrupts her sleep, and she jerks awake. She looks around wildly, disoriented. Her father is asleep on one bed, and the stranger still passed out on the other. It takes her a moment to slot in the missing piece.

The girl is gone.

Avi glances at the clock. 10:00. She’s got two hours to find the girl and bring her back before she’s supposed to wake up her Daddy.

She finds her shoes and slips them on, easing quietly out of the room. The girl has a head start on her, and she’s barely a blip up ahead. Avi takes off running in her direction, feet pounding hard on the pavement. She skids around a corner and ignores the honk of an irritated driver as she shoots blindly across an intersection. The girl glances back over her shoulder, sees Avi gaining on her, and lowers her head, doubling her effort.

Avi’s lungs are burning, as are the soles of her feet. She’s flying past storefronts and dodging startled pedestrians, slowly closing the gap between herself and the girl.

They both hit the wall about the same time. Avi’s quads are burning, and by the way the girl slows to a jog, hands rubbing at her thighs, hers are too. She catches up to the girl as she’s leaning heavily against a battered Toyota, trying to fit the key into the lock on the door, and shoves her, hard. The keys fall to the ground and the girl scoops them up as she spins around to face her, clearly furious.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“Where do you think you’re going?”

For a moment, they’re at a stalemate. Avi notes distractedly that it’s both a good and a bad thing that they’re in a bar parking lot. There are no other cars, and as such, no observers, but they’ve got to stand out, two teenage girls arguing and alone. It’s only a matter of time before someone stops to see what’s going on, and the last thing she wants is to somehow bring their existence to the attention of the authorities.

The other girl cracks first. “I’m bringing the car back to the motel, so I can get my Dad and we can leave,” she says defiantly. “We’re better off on our own.”

Avi considers it for a moment. She doesn’t want the other girl there, with her father who had brought danger to them all, so it would be easy for her to let the girl do as planned. But, her father had made it clear that he expected them to protect the strangers, he and Avi, and she knows she can’t let her father down. Besides, there’s no way the girl will be able to pull it off. When she gets back to the motel, she’ll have to get her dad into the car, and given the state of him, it’s something the girl won’t be able to handle on her own, and certainly not without waking Beau. Any way she looks at it, it’s best for Avi to put a stop to this right then and there.

“Don’t be stupid.” Avi shakes her head, and puts out her hand. “Give me the keys.”

The girl looks at her in disbelief and takes a step forward, using the few inches of height advantage she has to stare down at Avi. She crowds her, bumps into her slightly, sending Avi stumbling back a step; it’s as clear of a challenge as Avi has ever received.

“I don’t know who you people think you are,” the girl says, seething, “or why you think you’re in charge of me and my Dad, but you’re not. You’re just a couple of backwoods, country hicks from the swamps. You’re like cockroaches, always underfoot.” She pauses, smiling triumphantly, her words going snide. “That’s what you are. A swamp bug.”

Avi is sure she’s going to regret what she’s about to do, but she does it anyway. Quicker than the other girl can blink, Avi brings her elbow up and catches her hard underneath the chin. The girl’s head snaps back and she takes a stumbling step backward, one hand flying up to her face. That’s when Avi grabs the hand with the keys, moves quickly just the way her Daddy taught her, and spins her around so that the other girl is slammed into the car.

“My Daddy was right,” she hisses, giving the girl a light shove. “Stupide.”

The keys clang to the ground again. She holds the girl there for a moment longer, pressing her into the car door once more, then lets her go. She scoops up the keys, stuffs them in her pocket, and takes a step back.

The girl whips around. She’s hunched slightly, making it look like the car is supporting her, particularly when she crosses her arms over her belly protectively. Her eyes catch Avi’s for a moment before flickering off to the side, and her face is sullen and angry.

“So are you coming back with me or not?” Avi asks, trying to keep her voice hard. It’s difficult, now that she’s won, now that the girl looks vulnerable and scared despite her defiance.

The girl shrugs, then glares at her.

“Fine,” Avi says, turning on her heel. “I’m heading back to the motel. I’ll see you there, or I won’t.”

She takes five slow steps before she hears the girl’s footsteps behind her.

******

When Avi pushes open the door to the motel room, her father and the stranger are staring at one another. There’s a definite tension in the air, which breaks almost immediately as she enters.

“Erika,” the stranger says. He tries to stand but, halfway up, groans, clutches at his stomach, and falls back to the bed.

“Dad,” the girl cries, rushing over to his side and wrapping her arm around his shoulders supportively. 

They square off, two teams with a decidedly antagonistic relationship.

“Avi?” her father asks quietly.

Avi shrugs, and answers, “She ran away.”

“No, I didn’t,” the girl, Erika, says sharply, and turns to her father. Her anger is back in full force. “I went to get the car so that we could get out of here.”

It has all the makings of a situation that could turn bad quickly. Avi’s shoulders tighten with the tension, and she waits for the explosion.

“I think we all need to take a step back,” Beau says, his voice soothing and calm. “We’re on the same side here, with a common enemy, and it doesn’t help any of us to be at each other’s throats.”

Avi knows what it looks like when there’s a surfeit of testosterone in the room. She’s seen men at each other’s throats for less, so it comes as a complete surprise when the tension simply breaks in two.

“You saved my bacon,” the stranger says. He puts a hand into the bedding behind him, sinking back into a half recline. “And, you did a pretty good job with the needle.”

Beau relaxes as well, leaving only Avi and Erika to glare at one another.

“So what now?” the stranger asks.

“How about we start with your name?”

“Ricky. Ricky Rutherford. This is my daughter Erika.”

“Beau Beauvais. This is Avigail.”

Now that she sees them together, relatively relaxed and not covered in blood, Avi can see the clear resemblance. Both are lanky, with reddish blonde hair, sky blue eyes, and lightly tanned skin that hints at a great deal of time spent outdoors.

“All right, Ricky,” Beau says, affording the stranger a respect Avi’s not sure he deserves. “This is where we are. There was a clan of at least three vamps. One is dead now, so they’re bound to not be happy. We have lost the element of surprise. We are outmanned. It is not a good position. We must leave here and regroup. We cannot run the risk that they have tracked us back to this location. You are injured. There is your girl and mine. This is not a defensible position.”

“They’ve got to be reeling, though,” Ricky says and it grates on Avi, the way he’s acting as if this is a joint decision. “We took down one of their own. Maybe it’s the time to strike, while they’re disorganized.”

“No.” Beau’s disagreement is absolute. “That is irresponsible. We will leave this town and call for help. You cannot fight them, not in your condition, and I don’t take stupid risks.”

“All right. All right.” Ricky holds up his hands in supplication, the victory surprisingly easy. “We move. We regroup. Then we head back and get the sons of bitches.”

Avi can see her father struggling with something. Whatever it is, she doesn’t find out. Instead, he nods. “We move.”

******

In the end, they form a reluctant convoy. 

They have to go back and get the car, and it gets a little awkward when Avi digs the keys out of her pants pocket. Her father looks at her questioningly, and she knows there’ll be a story to tell later, when they’re alone, and that he won’t be completely happy. They don’t all fit in the truck, so Erika and her father sit in the cab while Beau drives, and Avi crouches down in the bed, eyes stinging as the wind whips her. 

It feels a little like her last refuge.

“Do you want to tell me where you were?” he asks once they’re out of the city, back on US-50 heading east toward Pueblo.

She keeps her attention focused on the floorboard through the telling of the whole story.

When she finishes, he sighs, disappointed. “That is not the way you treat a girl who has just suffered such a shock.”

“But I told you what she called us, Daddy. What she called me.”

“Yes, but you have to control your temper, Avi. It can get you in trouble. How’s it going to look, you beating up this girl while her father lies in our motel room, sliced wide open? This is the kind of thing that doesn’t end well for us.”

She recognizes the wisdom in her father’s words, but can’t quite bring herself to feel badly about what she did.

“I don’t like these people, Daddy.”

Beau sighs, hands tightening around the wheel. “He is too impatient. He rushes into things without thinking. This will get him killed. This will get other people killed. Remember this, Avi. You must know your limits and you must not exceed them.”

“Why do they come with us, then?” she grumbles.

“You would give up on an ally so quickly?” Beau chides. “There are not so many of us hunters that we can afford to do that.”

It takes a full two hours to get to Pueblo. Beau pulls into a motel parking lot soon after they cross over into city limits, and rolls down his window. Ricky pulls up beside him and does the same.

“We’ll get a room, find something to eat, and talk through a plan,” Beau says.

“Sounds good,” Ricky calls back. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

Beau’s at the counter, getting them a room, when the little Toyota squeals out of its parking space and roars back onto the interstate.

Avi’s got her door open and is about to run back inside to get her father when he comes bursting out of the motel’s office. “I heard the noise,” he starts, looking around frantically, when she cuts him off.

“They’ve gone.”

“Stupide,” Beau curses, climbing back into the truck.

******

What happens next is a bit like a road race, where the little Toyota manages to keep enough of a lead that they don’t catch up.

They’re heading straight back to La Junta.

“I suppose he thought we wouldn’t find it worth the effort to chase him back,” Beau says angrily just as they skirt past the edge of town, banging a hand against the steering wheel as irritation overtakes him. “I don’t know what it is he’s planning, but I already know it’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard. This man, he doesn’t think.”

The chase ends on a rutted dirt road leading to an abandoned property on the outskirts of town. Ricky pulls his car to a stop just before the line where wild and overgrown grass turns into something approximating a yard, killing the lights and jumping out of the car. They’re close enough behind him that he’s only managed to make it to his trunk, digging into it frantically, before Beau is out of the truck.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Beau demands, his voice a whisper-shout that echoes through the empty space nonetheless.

It’s an isolated patch of land, flat and empty as far as the eye can see. The house itself is grayed and weathered, one strong storm away from collapse, and Avi can feel their tenuous vulnerability. There is nowhere to hide. Nowhere to run.

Ricky looks up, eyes hard. “I’m finishing the job.”

“If by job you mean your death, then yes. You are finishing it.”

Avi’s out of the truck now too, just far enough out of the way so that she can move should things turn physical, because Beau and Ricky are facing one another now, shoulders squared as if this is going to turn into a fight. “You didn’t have to come after me,” Ricky says tightly.

“And what was I to do?” Beau asks, body taut with an anger he can barely restrain. “Let you kill yourself on a fool’s mission?”

“It’s none of your business.”

Their voices have gotten progressively louder. They’re verging on shouts, and Avi is growing increasingly nervous. She sees Erika out of the corner of her vision, moving slowly toward her father from behind, and she doesn’t hesitate. She takes off at a run, lowering her shoulder and tackling the girl to the ground.

“Avi!” her father calls, exasperated – because this is falling apart, turning into something he can’t control – as she springs up on top of the other girl and pulls her fist back. “You will stop that.”

“Get off of me,” Erika grunts, shoving at Avi’s shoulders.

And then it all goes to hell.

Her father sees them first, two black shapes rushing toward them at a speed that is inhuman. He freezes for a second, looking at her with wide, terrified eyes, then begins to sprint her way.

“Vamps,” he screams, and Avi looks up just in time to duck the hand swiping her way.

The sound of gunshots is loud in the relative stillness, and she hears more than sees the vampire above her stumble back. And then her father is there, wrapping an arm around her waist and grabbing Erika by the wrist, pulling them back out of range as quickly as he can while Ricky reloads.

“You run,” he says, gripping her shoulders hard. “You run as fast as you can as far as you can.”

But she can’t leave him there. He’ll die, she knows he will, with Ricky shooting bullets that may slow down but never stop a vampire. He’s got no defenses, no time to pull the stakes from the extra-large metal toolbox he’s welded into the truck’s bed, so it won’t be long until he’s ripped to pieces.

Her fingers slip as she tries to pry open the lid to the toolbox. Her father at least has a stake now, she sees, tossed his way by Ricky, but he’s no match for the speed of the creatures. He’s taking a beating, hard blows that send him flying through the air, and just as she manages to wrench the lid of the box open, he’s thrown hard. She screams, pulling free the crossbow, using the ground to nock it, and slotting a stake into its groove, because the vamp is standing above him, a positively murderous smile on his face.

“No!” The word echoes through the endless openness, followed by the dull thunk of a crossbow firing. She doesn’t remember it, doesn’t remember lining up the shot or pulling the trigger, but the stake finds its target with a sickening crunch, sinking deep into the heart of the vampire.

It’s her first kill.

There’s no time to rest, because the other vampire is headed her way. She’s got her mouth open wide in a snarl of pure fury, fangs shining in the moonlight. She’s gaining quickly, covering ground at twice the speed of a human, and Avi drops the crossbow and runs. She scrambles past the truck at a dead run, nearly tripping as a wiry clump of sagebrush tears at her ankles. The ground is uneven, full of rocks and the gnarled remains of long dead underbrush, and she nearly loses her balance as the terrain beneath her feet shifts suddenly and she finds herself tumbling face first into a trench carved by the summer rains. Small, sharp rocks tear at the palms of her hands as she pushes up to her knees, fighting to get a foothold in the dry soil.

She doesn’t dare look back.

She uses the scrub to pull herself upright and then she’s running again, the last vampire so close behind her that Avi swears she can feel claw-like nails gripping down on her shoulder. Her heart is racing; she knows she’s getting close to the edge, knows it won’t be long before there’s no escape in sight and then it’ll be death if she’s lucky, when her father pops into her line of vision.

“Down,” he yells, and Avi drops into a roll instinctively, hands coming up to shield her face.

She sees the glint of light off the curved blade of the axe as it slashes above her head. The noise it makes when it impacts flesh is sickening. It’s a wet crunch, followed by another and another, and she’s already on her feet again when her father delivers the final blow, severing the creature’s head from her body.

“Avi,” he says frantically, dropping the axe as she rushes over toward him. His hands are everywhere, checking her for injury and finding nothing more than twin sets of scratches on her shoulders. 

He pulls her to him and she buries her face in his shoulder; his voice is choked, a mixture of terror and relief. “Oh, Avi.”

He can’t stop shaking. Neither can she.


	3. Chapter 3

Present Day

When Avi wakes up the next morning, Erika is sitting on the edge of the bed. She has her shirt off and is gently peeling back the bandage on her abdomen. The skin beneath it is abraded, swollen, and angry. Blood has seeped through the bandage that Erika tosses carelessly to the side, but the wound isn’t serious.

“I’m surprised you haven’t managed to kill me yet,” Erika says dryly, looking over at Avi. “I don’t recall there being a time we’ve met when I haven’t been hit, kicked, tackled, or – now – shot.”

Avi shrugs, shaking off sleep. “I’m sure you’ve had worse. You’ll live.”

“That’s not the point. That fact that I’m in a great deal of pain? That’s the point.”

“I told you to move.”

Silence falls quickly and awkwardly.

“So,” Erika says finally, “is that your Dad’s truck out there?”

Avi’s eyes narrow distrustfully. “Yeah. It’s his. Why?”

Erika offers a sad smile and digs into the med kit at her side. “I can’t believe that old thing is still running, is all. It could use some work.”

Avi shrugs again, not sure how to interact with this girl from her past, not sure she even wants to try.

There’s a moment of silence before Erika, eyes focused on the new bandage she’s applying, says quietly, “I was sorry to hear about what happened to him. Beau was a good man.”

There’s no reply Avi can bring herself to give.

“Get dressed,” she says instead. “We’ll pick up breakfast before we go get your things.”

It’s a concession. A small one.

Breakfast is eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee at a small diner they find down the street.

“I’m sorry about the eye,” Avi says awkwardly, sipping her coffee. Erika’s got a bruise the size of Avi’s fist just underneath her eye, winging across her cheek. It’s a dark, stunning black that she probably won’t get rid of for a while.

Erika smirks, tracing her fingers along the edge of the black stain of the bruise. “It’s okay. I choose to believe it makes me look roguish.”

Other than the bruise, Avi has to admit that Erica looks good. Her hair is long, tumbling over her shoulders in the same mix of red and blonde, and she’s grown into features that were too expressive for a child. Her eyes are the same vibrant blue as always, and her mouth, upper lip a little too thin for the perfect cupid’s bow, fits the smirk she seems to wear constantly. She looks like she should be back home in California, starring in a surfing movie or a sunscreen commercial. Not sitting in a diner in the middle of Tennessee in a spare pair of Avi’s old, worn jeans and a black tee shirt, looking like she’s been on the losing end of a bar fight.

“So you’re still in the game,” Avi notes, pushing the remains of her breakfast away. She feels like she’s sitting across the table from a fragment of history. It’s disconcerting, bringing back memories both good and bad.

“What else would I be doing?” Erika replies, leaning back against the bench. She extends her arm along the back of it, owning all of the space around her; she looks larger than she is, confidence seeming to magnify her twice over. At Avi’s shrug, she continues, “I heard you went to college.”

“For a little while.”

“So you couldn’t stay away either.”

Avi looks away, eyes focusing on the empty storefront across the street, and changes the subject. “Where were you heading?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“Nowhere in particular.”

Erika’s smirk widens, like she knows her lazy, unconcerned drawl is just the type of thing to drive Avi insane.

Avi’s lips tighten and her eyes narrow, her irritation visible. “So you what, drift around the country looking for jobs?”

“Yeah,” Erika nods. “Pretty much.”

“Why here?”

“I heard a vengeful spirit was killing pretty young thrill seekers. I couldn’t let it pass.” Erika cocks her head to the side, looking at Avi assessingly. “And where are you off to next?”

“It’s about five hours down to Jackson.” Avi squints at the light coming in through the window. “I thought I’d go down and check on Uncle Etienne’s old hunting cabin.”

“How is your Uncle Etienne?”

“Dead, two years ago.”

Erika frowns, and offers another heartfelt, “I’m sorry.”

“Cousin Henri is the heart of it these days. He has the contacts and knows all of the secrets, but he’s not much of one for the woods. I like to check in when I’m in the area, make sure the place isn’t falling to pieces.”

She smiles at the thought of the place. It’s filled with such good memories. Her father, her Uncle Etienne, and her, all sitting around the tiny space heater in the corner, warming their hands and trading stories.

Erika’s wistful smile matches her own. “You and your family,” she says, and there’s a hint of fondness in her tone.

At it, Avi’s smile turns sour. “What’s left of it anyway.”

Erika’s a little softer around the edges, Avi thinks. Less caustic. Less defensive. Less arrogant.

“We should get your things,” she says finally, glancing at the bill the waitress has left on the table and throwing down more than enough money to cover it.

******

Erika turns to face her, the front doors of the bus terminal visible just behind her. “Next time I see you, maybe you could hold back on the physical violence.”

“Next time I see you, tell me who you are before I punch you.”

The truck is rumbling beneath them, a slow, steady vibration. “Will that stop you?”

For the first time in a while, Avi’s smile is genuine. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

Erika’s lips part, as if she’s about to say something, and Avi waits. It’s odd, this sudden parting after their sudden reintroduction, and she feels like there should be more to it. It’s anticlimactic in a way, not at all a good-bye befitting of the adventure of the night before, but it’s been years since she’s last seen Erika and they never were friends to begin with, really. They’re bound together by the nature of their history, a handful of encounters scattered across her teenage years, and the pull of their chosen work.

“Look,” Erika says suddenly, jumping straight to the middle of a conversation, “I’ll just say it.” She pauses, takes in a deep breath, and continues, eyes flicking from Avi’s to the dash and back again. “I was thinking, maybe I could ride with you for a while. At least to a big city,” she amends, smiling ruefully, “where I can steal a car with less chance of getting caught.”

They’re at a bus terminal, so Avi would be completely justified in saying no. She could see Erika onto a bus and watch her ride off out of her life again, maybe even for the last time, but something stops her. Maybe she’s lonelier than she knew, she thinks, even as she’s nodding her head curtly. “All right. Just for a little while.”

Erika deflates slightly, shoulders shedding the burden of anticipation. “Stay here,” she says, already pushing open the truck’s door. “I’ll grab my stuff and be right back.”

Avi knows it’s a bad idea immediately, but it’s too late. She’s agreed, and there’s no way she’s going to gun it out of there while Erika is in the terminal. She’s given her word. And anyway, it’ll probably just be for a day, and in the meantime, she’ll remember why she likes to travel alone.

“Ready to go?” Erika asks, climbing back into the truck. She’s got a black backpack with her, stuffed to the gills. It rattles slightly when she drops it to the floorboard, and Avi can’t help but smile. If nothing else, it sounds like Erika is prepared for almost anything.

“Memphis sound good to you?” Avi asks, it the first big city she can think of on the way to Jackson.

“I thought we were going to Jackson,” Erika replies, shooting her a challenging look. “You can show me this cabin, at least, and then we’ll find a suitable place for you to offload me.”

“Yeah,” Avi concedes. “Jackson.”

If it was awkward at the bus station, it’s even more awkward as they pull out onto Interstate 40.

“I guess they managed to get that fire out before we accidentally burned down the eastern seaboard,” Erika says finally, stiffly, just as they’re passing into the outskirts of town. “I would have felt some amount of guilt over that.”

“Just some?”

“Well, I mean, I didn’t actually start the fire. I may have in some way facilitated it, but…”

“How about we not lay blame here. If you hadn’t just gotten your ass handed to you by a spirit, you would have been the one with the lighter fluid and the zippo.”

“I wasn’t getting my ass handed to me.”

“Not how I remember it,” Avi says blandly.

Erika frowns. “Yeah, well at least I managed to make it down the stairs without almost killing myself. Besides, the way I remember it, you were the one getting her ass handed to her by a spirit when I showed up and rescued it. It being your ass, just so we’re clear.”

There’s a definite hint of acrimony seeping into the conversation that both realize is not conducive to surviving even the five hour drive to Jackson in one piece, much less making it for any longer than that, so Avi cranks up the volume on the stereo just as Erika crosses her arms over her chest and turns to very deliberately look out of the window, and neither say a word for at least 10 minutes.

Avi spends the time scanning through radio stations, and Erika’s almost reached her tolerance level for the alternating rhythm of static-snippet of song-static-snippet of commercial-static-snippet of conversation when Avi finally settles on one, and the slightly tinny sound of an excitable commentator fills the cab. He’s talking about troubles in the Volunteers’ backfield, making speculations and assertions, and the patter of it is surprisingly relaxing.

“You still keep up with that?” Erika asks, tilting her head toward the dashboard console.

Avi glances over in surprise. “When I can.”

It’s enough to break the tension, and they drive the next hundred or so miles in silence.

******

Avi’s Uncle Etienne’s hunting cabin isn’t in Jackson proper. It’s to the east of the city, somewhere off the stretch of road running from Jackson to the Bienville National Forest, down a snaking trail of back roads imprinted on Avi’s memory like a map. They stop in Jackson to have lunch and pick up supplies, and she calls her Cousin Henri to let him know she’s going up to the cabin, just in case.

“Sure thing, Avi,” he says, and she can tell he’s distracted. “I haven’t been out there in longer than I can remember, so the place might be a mess. You let me know if there’s anything I need to take care of.”

He’s not in town. He keeps quiet about where he actually is, and Avi doesn’t ask.

She fills a Styrofoam cooler with ice and food. There’s no refrigeration out at the cabin, maybe even no electricity if something’s happened to the solar panels since the last time she was there. Either way, they’ve got well water and a gas stove, so even if it’s a possibility that they might freeze when the temperature dips down after sundown, at least they won’t starve.

The further they get out of town, the fewer and farther between are the houses. Soon Avi’s steering them down one gravel road after another, until she pulls into a rutted dirt road that peters out into something more like a trail about a hundred feet in. For all Erika can tell, they’re just driving over wild land; the trees are cleared just enough so that only the tips of their branches brush by the truck’s sides, though they scrape ominously. And then, suddenly, they’re in front of a relatively well maintained cabin. It’s small, no more than a couple of rooms and a fairly spacious front porch. There’s a smaller shed set off to the side, and the whole thing looks like it’s been teleported directly from the earlier part of the previous century right into the present day, with weathered and grayed wood topped off by a roof that’s got four large solar panels inset.

“I guess this is what they mean when they say roughing it,” Erika mumbles, earning a short laugh from Avi.

“At least you’ve got four walls and a roof here. Roughing it is something else entirely.”

The cabin is in fairly decent shape. It’s musty, and there is a substantial layer of dust on everything, so Avi throws open all the windows and doors and pulls a well-used broom out of the closet and hands it to Erika.

“You sweep,” she says. “I’ll dust.”

After a moment, Erika takes the broom grudgingly.

When they finish, the place smells a little better, more like lemon Pledge than stuffy old cabin, and Erika watches as Avi stands in the middle of the room with a soft smile on her face, gaze hazy and distant.

“Did you actually use this cabin for hunting, or was it some sort of super secret Beauvais meeting place where you planned for other kinds of hunting?”

“A little bit of both,” Avi says, snapping out of her reverie. “There’s a creek out there about half a mile away. Daddy and I would float it during duck hunting season, and sometimes we’d come out here with Uncle Etienne during deer hunting season, but we never did shoot much.”

Erika smiles faintly. “Aside from the murder of adorable animals, it sounds nice.”

“Spare me,” Avi says tiredly, rolling her eyes. She changes subjects abruptly, moving away from nostalgia and back to business. “I’ve got to head up to the roof to check on the solar panels. Think you could hold the ladder?”

The shed turns out to house a variety of tools, some of them more conventional than others.

“That’s pretty nasty,” Erika says, holding up a wickedly curved blade. Its sheen has dulled a little with time, but she’s fairly sure just a little effort would have it gleaming.

Avi smirks at her obvious fascination and takes the blade from Erika’s hand.

“Only useful in certain situations, though,” she says, and before Erika can move, Avi has the blade circled around her neck. She can feel it pressing lightly against her skin, all the way from the back of her neck to where the tip presses against the place where blood pounds through her jugular, and she freezes.

“What the fuck, Avi?”

The blade is gone as quickly as it appeared, and Erika exhales, swallowing hard, the sudden spike of adrenalin that had flooded through her at the threat of the sharp blade against her skin abandoning her just as quickly.

Avi smiles wryly. “It calls for a little more close contact than I’d prefer.”

Erika merely rubs at her throat and glares.

“Oh, come on.” Avi looks at her expectantly, exasperated. “I wouldn’t have hurt you.”

When Erika continues to glare, Avi sighs. “I’m sorry, okay,” she offers, laying the blade down carefully. “I wouldn’t have cut you.”

“What if I’d fainted from the shock? Huh?” Erika shakes her head and crosses her arms over her chest, mostly in a place where she knows Avi didn’t mean anything by it, but still not quite ready to accept it as an excuse. “That thing would have taken my head off.”

Avi’s expression is arch, amused. “Do you usually faint from shock?”

“No, but there’s a first time for everything.”

“I think you can agree it seems highly unlikely.”

“If I’d fainted and you’d cut off my head, you’d feel pretty bad right now,” Erika mutters, still rubbing away the phantom memory of the sharp blade against her neck.

Avi smiles slyly to herself as she turns to shift through the tools scattered on the counter in search of a screwdriver. “At least it would be quiet around here again.”

Erika goes silent, her glare accusing and infinitely less indulgent than a moment before.

“I said I’m sorry,” Avi mutters, ignoring the unwelcome twinge of regret she’s beginning to feel. When Erika continues to glare, eyes cold, Avi sighs, aggrevied. “I’m going up on the roof.”

Despite her desire to take the ladder and run as soon as Avi is on top of the cabin, Erika doesn’t.

“Everything looks good,” Avi calls out to no one in particular, as Erika is back in the shed again, peering into drawers and cabinets.

When she climbs down off the ladder – unassisted this time, and there are a few panic inducing moments when she’s pretty sure she’s about to topple over – it takes her nearly five minutes to find her.

“What are you doing?”

Erika looks over at her from under the upraised hood of the truck. “Can you even begin to understand how much work this truck needs?” she asks with something like true dismay. There’s already a smear of grease on her cheek on the side opposite her black eye, making her look like she’s done a piss-poor job of applying eye black. “I’m surprised it’s still running.”

“What do you know about cars?”

The look shot her way is classic Erika, haughty and dismissive. “Pretty much everything. My Dad taught me.”

Avi withholds comment, but the hint of derision in her eyes at the mention of Erika’s father is enough to raise Erika’s hackles.

“Of course,” she mutters, turning so that she’s looking at the engine once again, eyes hidden. “How could I forget how much better than us you always thought you were?”

Erika’s posture is stiff with anger, and for the third time that day, Avi feels herself soften incrementally. “Just don’t break anything,” she says, conceding, jerking her chin toward the truck. “It’s a long walk back to civilization.”

It gets dark early. They’re just past the time change, but out in the country, with no street lights, the blackness comes quickly and unrelentingly. Avi’s managed to get the batteries attached to the solar panels running; when she heads out to the truck with a hanging light attached to an extension cord, it’s a clear gesture of peace.

“Thanks,” Erika says roughly, attaching the hook to a bit of metal on the underside of the truck’s hood. She’s absolutely filthy, covered in dirt, grime, and grease. There’s a hand rag streaked with grease hanging out of her back pocket, and Avi remembers suddenly that Erika’s wearing her clothes; she doesn’t know if those stains will ever come out.

“So?” Avi prompts.

“So, we’re going to need parts and more time to work, but I’ve used what I could scavenge from the shed to fix some of the more obvious problems. This thing is a classic, Avi. You should take better care of it. If we had the time and equipment, I’d like to completely overhaul the engine. I know a guy in Phoenix… he’d let us use his shop. I’m talking a significant upgrade in horsepower. You’d get greater street speed, and we could ramp up your off-road potential.”

There are a lot of we’s and references to the future in what Erika has just said that Avi chooses to ignore.

“Sounds exciting,” she murmurs unconvincingly. 

“Oh, absolutely.” It’s the start of a five minute spiel that includes lots of words and phrases Avi doesn’t really understand, like compression ratio, cam duration, and rpm range. She’s sort of mystified by it all, really, because she doesn’t remember Erika really caring about much of anything, much less caring about it in this level of detail or with this level of excitement, so when Erika rambles to a stop, looking at her expectantly, all she can do is nod as if she’s comprehended some of what’s just been said.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, hoping that Erika won’t construe that as an agreement to anything, though the small yet genuine smile on her face makes Avi feel a bit uneasy. “I’m going to make dinner. Let me know when you’re about finished here. We’ve got a tub but no hot water heater, so I’ll put some water on the stove to warm it up.” She pauses a second, and shakes her head, amused. “You look like you’ve been rolling around in the dirt.”

******

Avi has just finished cutting up the holy trinity – onions, celery, and bell peppers – when she hears the hood of the truck slam down. Seconds later, the door swings open and Erika steps inside, shivering.

“It got cold,” she offers, laying down the hanging light Avi had brought out to her earlier.

“It’s about time,” Avi says, gesturing to the pots she has boiling on the small gas stove. “I need those burners.”

The tub is a free standing, claw-footed affair, already half filled with water. Once they’ve emptied the boiling water from the stove into it, curls of steam drift up, and it looks so inviting that Erika contemplates crawling into it fully clothed. Avi’s brought in a battery powered lantern, but most of the light in the room comes from the glow of moonlight shining directly down through the window.

“I’m making jambalaya,” is all Avi says before disappearing, leaving Erika alone with her bath.

It’s not long before the smell of browning vegetables and meat drifts back to where Erika is lounging in the tub. The hot water feels good on her many aches, some of them from her exertion that day but most of them from the night before. Her ribs hurt, but she’s not sure if it’s from when Avi slammed her into the wall or from when the spirit threw her halfway across the cellar. Neither helped, probably.

She takes her time, wiping down the tub after she’s through, because she’s left a ring of black right at the edge of the water line. Her bag is sitting just inside the door, and she grabs a long-sleeved tee shirt and a pair of pajama pants in deference to the cold, and is still toweling her hair dry when she pads back into the kitchen area. Avi’s got an old transistor radio perched on the window sill. She catches enough of it to know that it’s the LSU game, which makes her smile.

“That smells good,” she says, indicating the pan sizzling on the stove.

Avi accepts the compliment with a tilt of the chin. “It’ll be ready in a minute. There’s beer and water in the cooler.”

Erika grabs a beer, twists off the top, and settles into one of the chairs facing the small table tucked in the corner.

“This is nice,” she notes idly. “Peaceful.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Avi says, dropping a steaming plate onto the table in front of Erika. “Nothing ever stays peaceful for long.”

Erika gives her a dry look. “Your pessimism is a real conversation killer.”

“Good.”

“Although now that I know the sound of my voice bothers you so much, I won’t be so easily deterred.”

Avi pauses with a fork full of smoked sausage halfway to her mouth. “I don’t remember you being this chatty.”

“That’s funny, because I do remember you being this cranky.”

It’s Avi’s impassivity that really gets to her.

“You do realize that we’re all grown up now,” Erika continues, words angry and food momentarily forgotten. “You hated me when we were kids? Fine. I can understand that. I was kind of an asshole. You weren’t exactly a joy be around either.” She pauses, sighs. “But all that? It’s a lifetime ago.”

Avi stills, and the tension in the room intensifies. “What exactly do you want, Erika?” she asks, eyes boring into Erika’s.

Erika shrugs. “Everybody you meet, you lie to them. It’s the nature of the job,” she says, and her voice has changed, softened, taken on a wistful edge.

“And? So?”

“So it’s lonely, Avi,” she says plainly, without artifice. “Or maybe you don’t get lonely. Maybe you don’t ever want to take a break from it all. Maybe you don’t want to have a conversation where you don’t have to remember what lie you’ve told that day or what cover you’re using. Maybe you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be able to talk to someone who understands what it’s like.”

Avi’s fork clatters against her plate. “Maybe I just don’t have any interest in pretending.”

Erika’s lips tighten in a frown. She’s tired, and it shows on her face. “How about you give it a shot anyway.”

The silence that follows draws out. It’s filled with enough tension to make it impossible to break their arrangement, as if looking away or taking a bite of food might shatter it in irrevocable ways.

“Fine,” Avi says finally. “Talk.”

Erika’s eyes narrow distrustfully; the concession is less than graceful. “Okay. Where are you going next?” she asks nonetheless, uncomfortable now, gaze flicking down to her plate to give Avi room.

Avi’s answer comes in short, rusty sentences that slowly pick up steam. “I don’t know. Maybe down to New Orleans. I need to pick up some paper, and it’s been a long time since I saw Mother.”

Her mother has picked up where her grandmother left off, preparing gris gris bags, creating spells for protection, and, when she feels like it, looking into the future.

“New Orleans sounds good,” Erika replies offhandedly. “It’s been a while since I was there.”

The game is in the third quarter by the time they’re finished eating; LSU is up by a touchdown but Auburn is driving, ball on the 20. Erika pulls a worn pack of cards out of her bag while Avi washes up the few dishes they’ve used, and when she returns back to the table, Erika has dealt out a hand.

“You know Texas Hold’em, right?” she asks with a sly, crooked grin, shuffling the remains of the deck absently, the cards flying with professional precision.

“Just so long as we don’t bet,” Avi replies cautiously, watching the rhythmic motion of the cards with distrust. “I’m not looking to get conned again.”

“You know,” Erika murmurs conversationally, eyes focused down on her hand as if it’s nothing, what she’s saying, “it was my first kiss, too.”


	4. Chapter 4

14 Years Earlier

“You can learn all about the game, E, but it’s not just mechanics. You need more than that to win.”

They’re crowded around the small table in their dingy little motel room. Ricky’s chewing on a toothpick and watching as Erika shuffles. Already, she’s got the skills of a pro, but rarely uses them outside of their room. It’s always best to let’em think you know about half of what you actually know, he’s always told her. Don’t underplay it, or they’ll know they’re getting snookered. Don’t overplay it, or they’ll know to get out.

She deals the cards out without even looking. They land in neat, even piles, and she picks up her hand and taps it against the table twice.

“Watch me,” he says. “Pick out my tells.”

They’ve played this game together so many times that she could list off his tells without even needing to play a single hand, but this is different. He’s been teaching her, modifying his movements slightly so that she has to adapt, to look for something different. She’s always been good at this but she’s only now getting old enough to use it, and he’s proud of her. She knows how to do more than read tells. She can count, and figure probabilities, and, if all else fails, get in the heads of the other players and win from the inside out. She can run the table in pool and clear the decks in poker, and as long as she has both of those weapons in her arsenal, she’ll never go hungry. 

The game takes half the night. The pile grows on her side, then on his, then on hers again, until he’s left with a single chip that he throws into the middle, laying out his last few dollars on his hand. 

They’ve been living like this for the past eight years, since the day Ricky came home to find out Erika had been with the neighbor for three days. Her mom had left her there, left them both really, with nothing more than a note saying she was tired and she just couldn’t do it anymore. They’d be happier together, it’d read, like that was good enough.

Ricky had been 16 when he’d watched the creature eat his little sister alive right in front of his eyes. He didn’t know what it was, other than enormous, ugly, and not of any earth he knew. He’d been next, seconds away from ending up a pile of scraps just like his sister, when the man with the gun came racing into the cave where he was hanging, strung from the ceiling by his wrists. He didn’t catch much of what happened; he was in shock and woozy, losing blood himself from an earlier struggle with the creature, but the fight was loud and violent. The gunshots made his ears ring, and he tried to think of ways he could help, but there was little more he could do than sway from side to side and try to stay conscious. He wasn’t completely sure when it ended, because things went black for a little while, and when he came to, he wasn’t in the cave anymore. He was outside, looking up through the interleaving branches of a huge oak tree, with the sun bright enough overhead to nearly blind him.

All he remembered was a kind, worn face, and a soothing voice.

“You’re okay now, son. Everything’s going to be all right.”

It was never going to be okay ever again, of course.

“What was that thing?” he’d asked, struggling to sit up. He needed to make sure it was dead, needed to make sure it couldn’t ever hurt anyone else.

“Nothing,” the man said immediately, then added gently, “don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about it?” Ricky had cried, voice strangled, because there was no washing away of those images. He saw the creature, saw his sister, and saw what it did to her, the pictures there whether his eyes were open or closed. “It killed my sister. It ate my sister. What was it?”

It took the man a long time to answer, as if he was weighing over possibilities in his mind before arriving at the decision that the truth was probably best, even if it wasn’t. “Wendigo,” he said gruffly. “Legend says they used to be men, but once they tasted human flesh, they changed. Now there’s nothing human left of them.”

It was supposed to be one of those things they remembered fondly later, a brother-sister overnight camping trip free of parental supervision. It was supposed to be scary stories around the campfire and enough s’mores to make them sick.

“I’ll kill them,” Ricky had vowed. “I’ll kill every last one of them.”

There was no real going back after that. His family was shattered, parents divorcing within the year. His father salved the guilt and grief with alcohol, his mother with pristine order and the largest collection of kitten figurines in existence. He’d taken off when he was 17, dropping out of high school to get his GED, then hitting the road in the battered old Camaro his father had given him a year earlier, just before it had all happened. There was no information to be found about Wendigo, nothing other than sketchy accounts in old, dusty books and stories most people believed to be myths, but he kept searching, following any hint or trail he could find.

He met a girl, Wendy, in Riverside, California. When he traveled back through a year later, he stopped in to see her.

“You,” she said bitterly, over the wail of a 3 month old in the background.

So he tried to settle. He got a job as a mechanic and sold his Camaro. He used the money for a down payment on a small house, and spent most of his time fixing up the various pieces of it that were already falling apart. He asked Wendy to marry him, and he tried to forget about the things he’d learned.

He couldn’t.

It was hard to hold onto a job, especially after he found out about Harvelle’s Roadhouse. The place was full of men like the one who had saved him; hunters, they called themselves, and it had taken working through a year’s worth of tips to track it down. After he found it, he was gone for months at a time, skulking around the bar and asking questions, persuading hunters to take him with them on their hunts, because these men knew the world he’d been forced to see, and they knew how to do something about it.

Erika had been 8 when her mom had left.

As far as she knows now, Wendy – and that’s what she calls her, unable to even think the word Mom – lives in Santa Barbara with her second husband and their two children, happy and content and completely free of the bad memories her time with Ricky and Erika had created.

“I guess it’s you and me, kid,” Ricky had said, pulling Erika up into his arms and holding her tight. She’d been waiting at the window since the day her mom had dropped her off, and at the first sight of her dad’s car on the street, she’d been out the door like a shot. She met him just as he opened the door, wrapping her arms around his waist hard, and he’d looked around in confusion for his wife.

“Where’s Mommy?” he’d asked, bending down to look her in the eyes.

She’d just shrugged, tears streaking down her face.

“We’re going to have to do this my way,” he’d told her later that night. He’d fixed her Spagetti-O’s from a can, which was her favorite anyway, and talked to her like an adult.

The house went up for sale the next day, and when the divorce papers came in the mail, Ricky signed them without hesitation.

“We’ll be okay,” he promised her, and she ignored the panic and doubt in his voice.

It’d been nothing but the road since. She’d gone to so many schools that she’d lost count, never staying long enough to make friends. It was a wonder she’d learned anything, really, each city and state’s curriculum varying so much she’d only managed to build a fragmented map instead of a whole cloth. She figured it didn’t matter anyway, though. Her Dad was teaching her all of the really important things, like how to hustle money and how to fix an engine, so if she was a little fuzzy on things like the French and Indian War, that was probably okay.

“All in,” her father says, as the chip spins to a stop. He looks up with a smile and turns his cards over, and the game’s done.

******

She’s 16, but she’s been driving since she was 13. That’s when she was tall enough to both reach the pedals and see over the steering wheel; she’s always looked older than she is, so her Dad had only been slightly dubious when he’d said, “I’m pretty sure you won’t get arrested for this.”

Now, at 16, she passes for a 19 year old who could pass for 21, and her Dad’s gotten her a driver’s license to back it up. They’ve decided, jointly, that she’s old enough to try out her luck in bars and have developed a shtick that, so far, has worked every time. She sips coyly from a beer, never swallowing, and they have a good time. A Dad teaching his daughter how to play pool while she’s back from college on a break. She never fails to attract attention and her dad never fails to offer a good-natured wager.

“My girl,” he says, expression open and proud. “She’s smart. I’ve just started teaching her, but I bet she could beat you.”

And whoever it is, usually a man twice her age who can’t quite keep the leer off of his face, will swagger over and take the bait.

“Fifty dollars says she’ll win,” her Dad says, jovial and confident. “That’s how quick of a learner my little girl is.”

She loses the first game, of course, making sure to stay moderately inept and vaguely flirty.

“A rematch,” her dad will say with an indulgent grin, still too blindly proud to see she’s obviously outclassed. “Double or nothing. I don’t want her to feel bad, you know. Give her a second chance.”

The second game she barely eeks out, taking a few calculated risks so that it doesn’t look too smooth, and by this time, the mark is getting a little agitated. He’s down and no closer to managing to separate her from her father long enough to make a move.

Before he knows it, he’s out $300.

“I’ve gotta get her home before the wife starts to worry,” her dad always says, vaguely apologetic even as he throws her a little wink and hustles them out of the door. “You know how that can be. She just doesn’t understand.”

They’re careful not to run the same con at the same place too many times in a row. They move around and keep their eyes open for regulars, and they vary it up. Now they’ve started working their way into poker games, and her dad makes a big show over his little girl cleaning him out. That she does so to the rest of players sitting at the table in the meantime doesn’t exactly go unnoticed, but who’s going to think she’s doing anything wrong? Not a sweet-faced girl like her, with long blonde hair that makes her look like an angel.

If they’re running low and all else fails, they head to Vegas, where there are enough backroom card games for them to circulate through without catching too much attention. Sometimes they lose a little bit but most of the time they win, or at least she wins, with her father keeping up the patter that distracts just enough attention for it to happen before anyone really realizes.

It’s not a perfect life, but she loves it. They’re partners, with no secrets and no lies. Her father shows her how to shoot. She practices until she can make cans fly from 50 feet, and then 100. He teaches her to fight, dirty boxing to stun and surprise and even out the size differential she’ll undoubtedly face. Whatever her father learns in reconnaissance, he passes along to her, and together they look for patterns and clues. They have their first run in with a demon when she’s 14, just after that mess with the vampires, and they almost don’t make it out alive.

“Got lucky there, kid,” her dad says to her later, trying for happy-go-lucky, but she can still hear how much it scares him.

Together they learn the Latin chants that will exorcise demons and track down ancient sigils that offer protection. He gets her a knife for her 15th birthday. It’s long and sharp, and he builds her a dummy out of an emptied and restuffed 50 pound bag of rice that she uses to learn how to slide it in between someone’s ribs and jerk up, straight into the heart or lungs.

“I hear rumors,” he says one day, “that there’s something going on in Pennsylvania. Do you want to check it out?”

They’re in Arizona. Her dad has a friend there, another mechanic, and sometimes, in their downtime, Javie lets them work in the shop. The town provides the only school Erika’s been in and out of more than once, and Javie provides the only thing she’s got that feels like family, other than her dad. Every time they come back, he ruffles her hair, makes a production over how big she’s gotten, and takes them out to his mother’s house for a good home-cooked meal. Usually, they stay in the spare room over the garage he owns, and Erika knows that Javie could probably rent it out, but he keeps empty for them.

She’s pretty sure her dad saved Javie’s life one time, but it doesn’t feel like he owes them. It feels like a friendship. Like family.

With both of them taking turns at driving, they make pretty good time. They decide to stop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the night. It’s another full day of driving the next day, with an overnight in Dubois, Pennsylvania, and then finally, after another four hours or so on the third day of their road trip, they pull into Pike County. Pike County is nestled in the Poconos; a sign on their way in proudly proclaims, “Over 500 waterfalls in Pike County!”, and Erika figures they have to be lying, or are at least being judicious in their definition of waterfall, before wondering just who went out and counted them all.

They end up in a place called Lackawaxen Township, part of the ride right on the edge of a cliff looking down at the Delaware River.

After lunch, they get right to work.

“Journalism student at Penn State, you say?” the woman at the front desk at the local newspaper asks, looking at Erika questioningly over her reading glasses. She looks like the type to be skeptical of anything and everything, so Erika decides to take it as a testament of her skill when she gets the information they need.

“Five kids dead in the past three months,” she tells her dad, slipping into the passenger seat. They’ve done so much driving in the past three days that the cloth feels like it has become intimately molded to her anatomy, and she’s looking forward to being out and about in the town. “All of them lived on the edges of town.”

They get a map and tape it to the motel wall, pushing in pushpins at the locations of the houses where the dead children lived.

“Look at that,” her dad says, stroking his chin. He’s grown his beard out; it makes him look older, he tells her, even as she laughs at him. The beard doesn’t do much to cover up his boyish features, no matter how much he protests.

The pins are arrayed in a perfect semi-circle. It’s almost eerie.

“It’s got to be in here,” Erika says, tracing her finger over the circle the pins have almost created. “This is where we’ll find it.”

A drive out to the area proves it’s not as smooth as it had looked on the maps. The houses are scattered throughout the hills, and on the ground, that close to it, it’s hard to pick out the pattern.

Their break comes the next morning. Over breakfast, Erika spots the news article.

“Another Area Boy Sick,” the title reads, and she’s pretty sure that when they get back to the room and work out the placement of the pin, it’ll be another step closer to completing their circle.

“My turn for dress up,” her Dad says. He pulls out the suit and tie he carries everywhere; it’s come in handy more times than she would have imagined, and she can’t help but agree with him, when he puts on the glasses he had specially made with thick clear glass lenses, that he does indeed look doctor-ly.

They have a stash of passports, identifications, and licenses. It was one of the first things he’d learned all those years ago at Harvelle’s Roadhouse. The ruses had come naturally to them both, each of them charismatic enough to pull off pretty much anything, no matter the stretch. So, she keeps guard for him while he sneaks into the on-call room, emerging a few minutes later with a white coat to which he’s clipped a generic hospital identification badge, and she charms the boy’s room number out of the desk nurse on the pretense that she’s a student helper there to see if he’s up to some reading.

There’s a certain skill required in slipping through familiar situations without being noticed. The hospital isn’t small but it isn’t huge, so someone who doesn’t look completely at home will stick out badly. She’s impressed by the way her father strides through the halls, as if he belongs there, in this institution of healing, with his chipped nails and the calluses of a man who works with engines, not hearts.

They see him about the same time he sees them, and the tableau falls apart in an instant. Everyone freezes, and Erika is sure they’re going to be noticed, now that they’ve created a wave instead of a ripple, but time slots smoothly back into place a second later, when the man calmly closes the clipboard he’s been examining and walks their way.

******

They wait until they’re in the hospital parking lot to speak.

“Beau,” her father says calmly, as if the other man isn’t glaring at them.

“What are you doing here?” he asks, and Erika remembers clearly the smooth twang of his voice.

“Same thing you are, I imagine.”

They hadn’t parted on good terms the last time, not after her Dad had gone a little crazy and chased after those vamps half-cocked. These days, he likes to blame it on the blood loss, but Erika thinks that he’d been feeling the stress of having been caught unprepared, and badly, and had let it all melt into an irrational decision to go back and reclaim his confidence. She chalks it up to be male and stupid and is just glad he didn’t get them killed. He’d been apologetic for months after, looking at her sometimes with tears in his eyes as if he was thinking about what he could have lost, and she’d been on edge because of it because, at the time, that kind of pressure seemed like it was even more stressful than dying would have been. Of course, they got tangled up with that demon about six months later, and that whole scene was bad enough that the vamps were but a mere footnote in history.

They’d stayed with Javie for six months after that, not going on a single hunt.

Beau looks like he’s going to say something further, something perhaps not entirely pleasant, when her dad holds up his hand.

“Look,” he says. “I know what you’re thinking. The last time we saw one another, I did something stupid and rash and I put us all in danger. I’ve learned a lot since then, and I like to think I’m a better person, a better hunter, and a better father. I don’t know how long you’ve been in town or what you’ve managed to discover, but Erika and I think we might be onto something. There are five kids dead and one sick, so the faster we figure out what’s behind this, the better. I know you’re probably not too thrilled we’re here, but since we are, it makes sense to work together. What do you say?”

She’s seen her father talk his way into all types of situations, but she has a feeling Beau’s not the type to be easily swayed by charm. He narrows his eyes at her father, looking him up and down like he’s sizing him up, and Erika is about ready to pull her dad away and tell him that they’ll be better off on their own when Beau nods.

“Okay,” he says, “but at the first sign of trouble from you…”

He doesn’t finish, but she’s pretty sure her dad knows what he means.

******

It turns out they’re staying at the same motel, so it was probably only a matter of time before their paths crossed. Erika wonders if it’s some sort of hunter thing, if there’s something about an establishment that calls out to their kind of people, but figures it’s really probably chance more than anything else.

It figures she would be with him, Erika notes.

Avi looks about as thrilled to see Erika as Erika looks to see her.

“Them?” she asks her father contemptuously, and it takes everything Erika has in her not to smack the girl.

“Got a problem with that, swamp bug?” she taunts, smiling as the other girl’s jaw tightens dangerously. She’s itching for a fight, for a chance to get her own back after the last time, when Avi won every encounter, and pushing this girl’s buttons is so incredibly easy.

“Erika,” her father says softly, and shoots her a look of disappointment. She huffs, crosses her arms over her chest, and contents herself with glaring.

Avi’s smug smirk is an irritant, an annoying itch she’s not being allowed to scratch.

“So what have you found?” Beau asks, and Ricky takes him through the map and their drive through the countryside the day before, ending with the same observation Erika had.

“It’s here,” he says, tracing his finger along the circle on the inside of the pushpins. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s here.”

It ends up being Avi who finds the key – of course, Erika thinks snidely – the next day after a long day of searching through the newspaper archives in the local library.

“Michael Zane,” she says, lining up the row of photocopies that she’s made.

He doesn’t fit their pattern, not exactly. His death had been more than six months before the local killings, but his house was at the dead center of their unfinished circle.

“Leukemia,” Beau says, reading from the sheet. “Father dead, mother works at the local coal company. Correction, mother worked at the local coal company.”

Avi takes over. “The insurance company slapped a surcharge on the mother’s employer because of her son’s leukemia. The company wasn’t able to cover it. They were going to go bankrupt, so she gets fired. She’s a perfect employee before this, no history of anything, but in the span of three weeks, she’s written up three times and then dismissed. She can’t afford her son’s treatment and he’s getting sicker fast, so the community steps in and tries to collect money, but it’s too late. He dies. The local paper did a full story on it.”

“Sad stuff,” Ricky says, “but how is it connected?”

Beau’s got a look on his face like the answer is just at the tip of his tongue. “I have heard of something like this before. A child sickens and dies, and then others begin to sicken and die as well. It’s…” he pauses, brow furrowing. “It’s a demon. I think the mother’s fury has summoned a demon.”

“A demon?” Erika asks, shivering as she remembers her last run in with one of those.

“Acheri,” Beau says, the word finally coming to him. “It is an old Native American myth. The Acheri takes the form of a young girl and, at night, comes down from the mountain to bring sickness to the children. These children, the demon must have visited them.”

“How do we kill it?”

“It is hard, as you know, to kill a demon. Demons are smart creatures.”

Erika looks between the rest of them, all focused and concentrating, eyes narrowed, and the map, where the gap in the circle remains unclosed.

“We have an advantage,” she says, startling them all. “We know where it’s going to go next.”

******

She’d never been so angry with her father in her life.

“We can’t risk it,” he says, firmer with her than he’s been in a while. “This demon is targeting children. It’s killing children.”

“And I’m not a child.”

His eyes soften and he sighs. “I know you think you’re not, and I know it’s hard to remember you are, not living with me, but you are a child. You could be in danger. We don’t know how this thing operates.” He pauses, then reaches out to pull her into a hug. “You’re all I’ve got, you know. I don’t always protect you like I should, but this time… this time you’re staying here.”

It’s getting dark outside, closer and closer to the time when the Acheri might be out there, hunting. He and Beau are going to go hunting it in turn. They’ve narrowed the possibilities down to a single house. It’s the most likely target, home to a 7 year old little girl, and she knows she should just let her Dad go out there and do his job, but she doesn’t like being left behind. If she’s here, then he’s out there without her at his back; she’s pretty sure Beau makes for a more than decent replacement, but still, he’s not her.

Besides, he wants her to stay here, in the motel room, with Avi.

“It will be safer this way,” Beau had said. Erika did have to admit that the inside of their room looked like a veritable demon-killing armory, with bags of rock salt, flasks and squirt bottles of holy water, and a couple of pieces of sturdy iron rod. There was a shotgun on the bed, loaded with shells filled with rock salt, and earlier, they’d used chalk to draw a devil’s trap under each bed. If it came to that, all the girls had to do was manage to lure the demon to one of the beds without being caught themselves, and the demon would be stuck.

Not that Erika had any expectation that the demon was going to come after them at all. They were miles away from the site of the pattern, and as far as she knew, the demon had no way of knowing about them.

“You can order pizza,” her father had told her, as if that was a sufficient lure. “Watch tv. Have girl talk, or whatever it is normal 16 year olds do.”

So she ends up there trapped with Avi as her father climbs into Beau’s truck and it’s all she can to do keep herself from screaming with frustration.

“This is stupid,” she says, and is surprised when Avi agrees.

Erica commandeers the remote, and Avi lets her. There’s nothing on, though, just the local news and then shows she doesn’t get to watch regularly enough to care about. Avi sits in the corner reading, and it’s entirely annoying, the way she stays focused on that book. So much so, that Erika tosses a pillow with perfect aim, knocking the book out of Avi’s hands.

“Whatcha reading?” she asks innocently when Avi looks up with a growl.

There’s a clear moment of internal struggle, when Avi has to fight back the urge to throw something right back at her.

“Wuthering Heights,” she says finally, her voice a forced, measured calm.

Erika makes a face. “God, why?”

“For school.” Avi pauses, her smile growing sadistic. “Or maybe you don’t go to school. Maybe you’re…”

“Shut up,” Erika sneers. In the background, the hour starts over. A new program pops onto the screen, another show she hasn’t seen.

“I’m just saying…”

Erika frowns harshly. “I’m not stupid.”

“I’m sure that’s a matter of opinion.”

A retort is on the tip of Erika’s tongue, but she bites it back. This is what they do to others, she and her father. They get under people’s skin, make them slip up, and move in for the kill. So, she calms herself deliberately, consciously focusing on her heart rate until it starts to slow, because this is a game and Avi’s her mark, not the other way around. If Avi gets the upper hand, then Avi wins.

There’s no way she’s going to let that happen. Not again.

She watches as Avi sits back, happy and satisfied with what she thinks is a victory. She picks her book up off the floor and starts reading again. Erika can make out the name of it now, gold letters stamped on the green covering of a book clearly borrowed from the library. She blocks out the noise of the television and flick of the pages, reminds herself of all the things she knows, and bides her time.

When the show changes again, morphing into another sitcom, she says, properly chastised, “Hey, I’m bored. You wanna maybe play cards or something? My Dad’s been teaching me.”

Avi regards her cautiously, trying to sniff out the trap, but Erika looks half disinterested and only marginally invested, like it won’t matter to her one way or the other, so she nods slowly, already more than bored with the dramatic, yet painfully slow, shenanigans of the story.

“Okay.”

They end up on Avi’s bed. Erika shuffles clumsily, looking up in embarrassment when the cards flip haphazardly out of her hands. “Sorry,” she says, gathering them together and trying again.

It’s two card draw, nothing wild. Simple and easy, and Erika keeps one queen and throws away another, getting a two in return. She makes sure she loses at twice the rate she wins, so that nearly 45 minutes later, when she says again, “This is getting boring,” it’s not at all threatening when she proposes raising the stakes.

“I don’t know,” she says, shrugging carelessly. “We could bet, maybe. Do you have any money?”

Avi hesitates, because she’s got $20, but she’s been saving that money for a long time. She’s going to use it to buy her Dad a birthday present – she’s already got it picked out, a handy little Case knife down at the hardware store – but there’s a nicer one, one she knows he’d really love. And Erika doesn’t seem so good at this game, kind of like she doesn’t seem so good at anything else, so maybe there’s a chance Avi could win.

“A little,” she hedges, offering her own careless shrug.

They end up playing for quarters.

“Do you ever think about it?” Erika asks. She’s down $3, and biding her time.

“Think about what?”

“About dying. I bet those kids never thought about it and then one day – bam – it’s over.”

Avi shrugs, because she’s thought about those kinds of things before, but never for long. She doesn’t much care for the thought of death, with all the questions it raises. She doesn’t like to think about what might happen after.

“Think about all the things they never got to do,” Erika says, laying down a pair of Jacks. She sweeps the money over to her, down, now, only $1.50.

“Like what?” Avi asks, distracted.

“I don’t know.” Erika pauses long enough to deal again. “Like learn to drive.” She gives it time enough to sink in before asking innocently, “Do you know how to drive?”

“I’m only 14,” Avi says automatically, frowning down at her cards. “I’m not old enough to drive.”

“So,” Erika challenges. “My Dad taught me how when I was 13.”

“I’ll learn next year.”

“So if you died now, that’d be one thing on your list of things you haven’t done.”

“Driving’s not that big of a deal.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Erika murmurs, raking in another pile of winnings. “You haven’t even done it yet, so you don’t know. What about ice skating. You ever been ice skating?”

“In Louisiana?” Avi looks at Erika as if she’s crazy.

“Surely you’ve got ice skating rinks, even down there in the back country bayou.”

Avi shoots her a look of anger, and Erika suppresses a smile.

“So that’s two things,” she notes.

“Who cares about ice skating anyway,” Avi mutters, shoving a dollar out to the middle of the bed.

“It’s fun.”

“And cold. I don’t like the cold.”

“What about airplanes? Have you ever been on one?”

This time, Avi looks a little more uncertain. “No,” she says shortly, thinking of home and their house in Natchez, clean but small.

“That’s right. They probably don’t even have them down where you’re from.”

“Have you been on one?” Avi asks defiantly, not even noticing when the pile of cash in the middle of the bed is swept Erika’s way.

“Sure,” Erika lies easily. “Lots of times.”

She deals the cards again, her movements crisper now.

“That’s three things on your list.”

“Since I’m not going to die, it doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know, Avi. Those kids didn’t think they were going to die. They were young, too. I bet they’d never even been kissed.” Erika looks up, her eyes pinning Avi. “What about you? Ever been kissed.”

She can see the embarrassment on Avi’s face, and grins. “Four things, then.”

“Why, have you?”

“Of course I have,” Erika lies again, smiling smugly. “Most girls have been by your age.”

“That’s not true.”

“Sure it is. Every girl I know was.”

It is then that Avi notices that she’s down to $5, most of her money gone. She frowns, thinks of the knife she’s planning to get her Daddy, and refocuses on the game. There’s not enough time to save up that kind of money before his birthday, so she’s got to win it back.

She watches impotently as the rest of her money trickles through her fingers like sand. She doesn’t win more than one hand in a row, figures it has to be the worst luck of any card player ever, and is angrily blinking back tears tears by the time the game finishes.

“I need that money,” she says softly, dangerously, thinking about her Daddy on his birthday, no present on the table in front of him.

Erika grins, her revenge complete. Unless…

“What’s this?” she asks, her finger dipping into the collar of Avi’s shirt. She’s seen the thin gold chain a couple of times before, when Avi leans forward to deposit her cards. She gives a tug and it comes free of her shirt, a small, gold pentagram dangling at its nadir. “How do you manage to wear this without people calling you a witch?”

Avi hastily stuffs the necklace back into her collar. “It’s a sigil,” she says sharply, hand hovering at her throat protectively. “It’s for protection.”

Erika’s grin widens. “Well, how about this then. You bet that, and if you win, you get all your money back. If I win, I keep that and your money. I could use a little protection.”

Avi hesitates. Her Daddy had given her the necklace for Christmas a few years ago. It’s one of her most treasured possessions. But, her luck has to turn. It has to, after all of the bad hands she’s drawn, and if she doesn’t get her money back, there’s no Case knife and no gift of any kind.

“Fine,” she says, watching through narrowed eyes as Erika shuffles, perfectly this time, then deals the cards.

Avi has nothing in her hand. She throws away two cards and gets two new, and when she looks again, she’s got a pair of eights, king high. Something in her gut relaxes. The win is there – all of her money back, and that smirk wiped off of Erika’s face. She can feel it.

“What do you have?” she asks, laying her cards down with a flourish. Erika looks at them and frowns, and Avi can almost feel that money back in her pocket.

“A pair of tens,” she says finally, holding her cards out before her with an expression turned wicked.

Avi’s stomach drops.

“Hand it over,” Erika says, gesturing at the necklace.

Avi takes in a quick breath. She brings her hand to her throat, wrapping her fingers around the little sigil, and pressing it into her skin. “No,” she says softly. “My Daddy gave this to me.”

“You should never bet more than you’re willing to lose,” Erika replies easily, stacking her money up into piles.

“You’ve got all my money,” Avi says tightly, trying not to think about what she’s just lost. “I’ve been saving for months. I was going to use it to buy Daddy his birthday present, but… keep it. Keep it all. Just don’t take this. Take something else. Please.”

She likes the way it sounds to have this girl beg her for something, so Erika draws the moment out. “No,” she says finally, extending a hand, palm up. “Now give it here.”

“Please,” Avi says again, her voice cracking slightly as she feels her pride bend in the way of other emotions, need and shame chief among them.

Erika likes it even more this time. The last time they’d met, Avi had emerged triumphant from every encounter. For all she’d been two years younger, she’d put Erika flat on her back in the dirt. She’d looked down on her and her Dad like they were nothing. “Maybe we can work something out,” she says slyly, looking around the room, because it’s been a long time coming, but now Erika finally has the advantage; revenge is close enough to taste. Her gaze lights on the book, but no. She has no use for it, and anyway, it’s not enough. “I’ll tell you what,” she says finally, smugly, “I’ll make you a trade. You can keep your little necklace. You can even have your money back.”

Avi immediately grows wary. “And what do you want in return?”

“I want you to remember me forever, Avigail,” she taunts, saying the name in a mocking mimic of the way Beau does in his heavy Creole accent, then pauses, smiling a Cheshire grin. “I’ll take your first kiss.”

******

Avi has her eyes closed tightly, her fists down at her sides.

“Uh-uh,” Erika says softly, arrogantly, and Avi wishes she would just get it over with. “I said I’d take your first kiss in trade.”

“And I agreed,” Avi snaps, “so what’s the problem?”

“So,” Erika continues, as if Avi hadn’t spoken, “give it to me.”

When Avi opens her eyes, Erika’s sitting back against the headboard, looking so incredibly pleased with herself that Avi feels an overwhelming desire to punch her. She knows exactly what Erika wants, for her to crawl up there and kiss her, like some sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.

“Fine,” she grits out, hands clenched into fists so tight she can feel her nails digging into her palms.

She scoots up the bed slowly until she’s sitting alongside Erika, with her knees curled toward the other girl’s body. Erika’s still grinning at her, but she’s done worse than this, Avi tells herself. It’s just a kiss. Just a simple, little kiss.

She leans forward slowly, and suddenly, it’s happening. Her lips are on Erika’s, and it’s soft and warm and a little surprising. It’s not nearly as unpleasant as she’d thought it would be, so she tilts her head to the side, parting her lips a little, and inadvertently catches Erika’s bottom lip between her own. After a long moment, she pulls back slowly, and their lips cling together for a second longer than she’d intended, but, still, just as suddenly as it’d begun, it’s over.

“Okay?” she asks hoarsely, surprised at how out of breath she sounds.

The only thing that makes it better is that Erika sounds just as breathless. “Okay,” she says, and Avi’s kind of reassured by how startled she looks, blue eyes opened wide.

******

It’s so awkward after that that neither of them even mentions how odd it is to be going to bed so early. Instead, they switch off the lights and turn so they’re not facing one another, but Avi can’t sleep. Her lips are still tingling, and she can’t stop replaying the kiss over and over in her mind. Erika got her wish, she decides, because there’s no way she’ll ever forget that, no matter how hard she tries. Not that it meant anything to her, Avi thinks bitterly, because Erika had no trouble drifting off to sleep. She can hear her deep, even breathing, and burrows down even deeper into the covers, trying, again, to forget what it felt like when their lips had first brushed together.

The only reason she hears it is because she’s still awake. It’s a stiff creaking and a pained shudder, and Avi blinks for a moment, trying to place the noises. They don’t make sense, though, and she thinks it’s probably her imagination until she hears them again.

Not normal, she thinks, and rolls over. She’s about to wake Erika, even if she is sure the other girl will make fun of her for being frightened of nothing, when she sees the demon. It’s perched over Erika. Its hands, fingers claw-like, are around the other girl’s neck, and its face, twisted and misshapen and evil, is just above Erika’s. There’s a stream of greenish light arching between them, from Erika’s open mouth to that of the demon’s, and Avi freezes for a second, terrified at the sight of it.

“Erika!” she screams, scrambling off the bed. She nearly trips over her shoes, left haphazardly at the side of her bed, and goes stumbling into the table, knocking everything from it. She manages to catch the shotgun before it slides to the floor, and when she turns around, it’s to see the demon banging against the invisible side of the devil’s trap, gnarled face twisted into a snarling mask of hatred so terrible it chills her to the bone.

She pulls the shotgun up, points it at the demon’s head, and fires.

It disintegrates into vapor, but she knows it’s not gone. It’s still in there, trapped inside the Devil’s trap with Erika, who’s lying limply on the bed. She’s not moving, and for all Avi knows, it’s too late. For all she knows, the demon has already sucked the life out of her, but there’s no way Avi can leave her there, defenseless. So, she searches through the clutter to find one of the squeeze bottles of holy water, tosses the barrel of the shotgun up on her shoulder, and rushes around the edge of the bed.

She takes a deep breath before darting her arm into the circle of the Devil’s trap. She’s got her hand on Erika’s ankle, about to yank hard, when something cold and sharp clamps down on her and she looks up to see the Acheri staring back at her. Its mouth is open wide, a yawning black hole filled with razor sharp teeth; saliva drips down its chin and she shudders. She’s seen monsters, some even up close, but this is different. It looks like a little girl, but not, so hideously, grotesquely disfigured that it’s almost impossible to look at. Avi can feel its breath on her, cold, and reeking of death. Instinctively, she tries to pull her hand back but can’t. The creature’s claws are dug deeply into her skin and the motion only tightens its grip; she can feel the blood start to flow as her skin splits open, warm and slick.

“Go away,” she screams, bringing the bottle of holy water up and squeezing hard. Water hits the creature square in the face and it pulls back in pain, its screech the high, piercing cry of a bird of prey. In shock, its grip loosens enough for Avi to pull free, and she brings the shotgun up, emptying another blast square in its face.

It disintegrates again, and she moves quickly, both hands on one of Erika’s ankles as she pulls the girl from the bed.

Erika hits the floor with a dull thump, still and lifeless, just as the creature rematerializes. It swipes at Erika, its claw-like nails just brushing the edge of her hair.

“Oh god,” Avi says, almost hyperventilating; her eyes cut back and forth between Erika’s motionless body and the demon, screeching and furious. “Oh god.”

The thing is staring back at her, tilting its head to the side curiously. There’s something unnatural about the way it moves, with the deliberate grace of a lion, and Avi can’t help but wonder whether their Devil’s trap is fail proof.

“The incantation,” Erika whispers from the floor, startling Avi. Her voice is hoarse and weak, but Avi could cry with relief at hearing it if they didn’t have more pressing problems. “Do you know the incantation?”

It’s in the book. Her father had made a copy for her, but the book has been thrown to the floor with the rest of the things on the table.

“I can find it,” she says, eyes wide with fear.

She’s already scrambling to her feet when Erika stops her.

“No,” Erika says, grasping weakly at her hand. “Help me up.”

They’ve practiced this, her and her father. Ricky had made her run through it until it tripped off her tongue without thought, an all-purpose chant designed to send any demon straight back into Hell, and she makes a note to thank him later. She’s weak, so weak that she’s not sure she can make it to the end of it, but Avi is looking at her with wide eyes and the creature is lunging, throwing all of its might against the invisible shield of the Devil’s trap, and it’s all come down to her.

She begins to chant, the Latin rhythmic and almost soothing, and the creature begins to howl. It’s by far the most horrifying noise she’s ever heard, like the screech of metal on metal only amplified, so loud her ears start to ring. Soon she can’t even hear the sound of her own voice, has to trust the way the words feel in her mouth as she says them.

There’s one last, horrible shriek, so loud she doesn’t hear the door bursting open, and then a roiling plume of black smoke begins to circle the boundaries of the Devil’s trap like a cyclone. A pit opens up beneath it. She can see the glow of the fires of Hell sparking up as the smoke gets sucked down, disappearing with one last, angry wail.

“Erika.” She hears her father’s voice. It’s faint, as if coming from far away, and she’s vaguely aware that he’s pulled her into his arms. “Come on, baby. Be okay.”

******

The pit that’s formed in the middle of the bed closes as suddenly as it had opened, and when it does, Erika feels the life rush back into her.

“Dad,” she gasps, flinging herself up and into his arms.

“I’m so sorry,” he’s saying, pressing kisses into her forehead. “She read my mind, baby. She was looking into my eyes and she read my mind. She pulled it out and I couldn’t stop her. She knew everything. Who you were. Where you were. She said we’d never make it back in time to save you.”

She’s still a little disoriented. She was sleeping and then she wasn’t, and there was a creature hovering over her, literally sucking the life from her. And then she was on the floor, telling Avi that they had to say the chant. It’s the parts in between that are a little fuzzy.

“You are very brave, Avigail,” she hears Beau saying in the background. “A very brave girl.”

It’s only later, as they’re frantically gathering their things together in order to flee, that she sees the stippling pattern in the motel’s cheap drywall. It’s shot full of rock salt, scattered like buckshot, in two distinct circles. A glance down at Avi’s wrist shows blood seeping through a thick white bandage.

“You saved my life,” she murmurs in disbelief, grudgingly grateful. “Thank you.”

Avi only shrugs.


	5. Chapter 5

Present Day

“I can’t believe you lied to me,” Avi mutters, and Erika looks over and sighs.

“Are you still on that?”

“What?” Avi asks defensively. “It’s a big deal.”

“It’s not a big deal.”

“You’re such a lying liar.”

“It’s not.”

“Liar,” Avi says, clearly unconvinced.

“You need to get over this.”

“Liar.”

“Seriously. Get over this. I never should have told you.”

“Tricked by an older woman.” Avi pauses at that, considers it for a moment, and smiles smugly. “I was a total stud even back then.”

“Oh my god,” Erika moans. “You’re delusional. Stop it. Stop it immediately.”

“Uh-huh,” Avi hums contentedly, pleased by her new conclusion. “And now you’re blushing.”

“I’m not.”

“Liar.”

“Jesus.”

Avi’s smile turns devilish. “You never did tell me. Was it good for you?”

Erika frowns deeply and growls. “I can walk to New Orleans.”

“Please. We’re not even out of Mississippi yet. Do you seriously want me to let you out at some place called,” Avi pauses, reading the exit sign as they drive past, “Bogue Chitto Road?”

“It’s quickly becoming an appealing alternative.”

“You’re too sensitive.”

“You’re just annoying.”

“I remember you being a little more badass than this.”

“I remember you being quieter.”

After their tentative truce of the night before, only a fraction of the animosity that has been there in their back and forth for the past few days is left, and Erika almost wishes she could bring it back.

“I was your first kiss,” Avi notes with a proud, entirely too self-satisfied smirk.

“I will throw myself out of this truck.”

“Okay, fine,” Avi relents. “I’ll stop. For now.”

“I never should have told you,” Erika mutters, turning her focus away from Avi and instead to the endless march of trees on the other side of the window.

Avi’s grin grows softer. She doesn’t want it to make a difference, but it does.

******

“We’ll go see Cousin Delphine first,” Avi says. They’re on Interstate 10, halfway across the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain, and getting close to New Orleans.

“How about we have lunch first?”

“Delphine will have food.”

Cousin Delphine lives in a small, neat house on the outskirts of the Garden District, paid for wholly by her trade in paper.

“Cousin Avigail,” she says warmly, greeting Avi with an engulfing hug. “So good to see you. And who have you brought with you?”

“This is Erika,” Avi says, her words muffled by the voluminous scarf Delphine is wearing. “Erika Rutherford.”

“Interesting,” Delphine says in reply, finally letting Avi out of her grip. She pulls back, hands on Avi’s shoulders, and looks her over critically. “I like your dreads this length,” she says finally, tugging on one of the shoulder length locks. “Don’t let them get any longer.”

Avi rolls her eyes, bats Delphine’s hand out of the way, and says, “Anything cooking in here? We’re starved.”

Until now, Erika has only heard faint traces of Avi’s lingering accent. Here, at home and in familiar company, it drips warmly from her words.

“You don’t tell me you’re bringing a guest and I’m supposed to have cooked?” Delphine tuts affectionately. “I don’t think so. We’ll go out for lunch.” Her next words come out a little sharper, the underlying meaning clear. “Your friend can tell me all about herself.”

“She’s one of us,” Avi says immediately, offering a reassuring nod at Delphine’s guarded glance. “She’s a hunter.”

Delphine looks distinctly unconvinced. “This girl?”

“Hey,” Erika protests, offended.

“I’m just kidding, honey.” Delphine smiles wickedly before turning to Avi. “And here I was thinking you’d finally brought home someone new. It’s been too long, Avi.”

Avi ignores Erika’s raised brow and questioning look. “If we’re going to lunch,” she says pointedly, “let’s go to lunch.”

They end up at a place that looks like little more than a hole in the wall, but the crawfish po boys are amazing, and Erika can’t stop eating the sweet potato fries.

“We know each other from way back,” Avi says, forestalling what she knows is going to be Delphine’s battery of questions. “Daddy worked with her father on a couple of jobs.”

Erika appreciates the diplomatic handling of their somewhat rocky past.

“And you just so happened to bump into one another again?”

“Actually, yes.” Avi shakes her head ruefully. “It turns out that Erika and I were out on the same job.”

“What she means,” Erika says around half of a sweet potato fry, “is that I saved her ass.”

Avi’s eyes narrow in a glare. “That’s not exactly the way it happened.”

“And then she burned a house down and started a forest fire,” Erika adds, smiling sweetly.

“Sounds exciting,” Delphine drawls, ignoring Avi’s avid protest of the situation as explained. “So now you’re traveling together.”

“Well, I did have a motorcycle,” Erika admits, “but it kind of got caught up in the fire, so Avi offered me a ride.”

“So a bang-up job all around.”

Erika likes Cousin Delphine, with her wide smile and bright, dancing eyes, so she chooses not to take exception to the dry amusement in her tone. Besides, any woman who can pull off a fitted plaid button down and a massive, checkered thin linen scarf with that kind of aplomb deserves a little slack.

“Well, the world is minus one vengeful spirit,” Avi says, hurt, prompting Delphine to laugh at her sulk.

“I’m sure it is, Avigail, and some evil pine trees along with it,” she placates, sharing an amused smile with Erika.

“Both of y’all,” Avi says, wagging a finger between Erika and Delphine, “can kiss my…”

“Language!” Delphine scolds playfully. “Come now, Cousin. Where are your manners?”

Avi sighs, admitting defeat.

******

“So I have shared a meal with your friend,” Delphine proclaims after lunch, once they’ve settled again at her house, “and you are right. I have divined that she can be trusted.”

At Erika’s slightly confused look, Avi explains, “Delphine thinks she has the sight.”

“I know I have the sight.”

“She thinks she can read bad intentions.”

“I know I can read them.”

“Sometimes she even thinks she can tell the future.”

Delphine looks aggrieved at Avi’s teasing. “Grand-mére Rive herself said I have the sight.”

“But she’s yet to foretell anything that could be of use to me.”

“Maybe that’s because you rarely do anything useful,” Delphine teases in return, shaking her head. “But, enough of this. You haven’t come just to visit.”

“No, I haven’t.”

“You’re lucky I’m so patient. I’ve been holding this package for you for a long time.”

“And I appreciate it.”

“You should visit more often. Your Mother misses you.”

Avi rolls her eyes. “My Mother is too busy playing the high priestess to miss me.”

Delphine sighs, laying a hand on Avi’s, and Erika looks away. She feels, suddenly, as if she’s intruding on a private moment. “Your mother is a strong woman, but she won’t be here forever. Neither will you. If nothing else, she wants to tell you all her secrets.”

“You can keep the secrets, Delphine. You’re better suited for it.”

“Grand-mére Rive said you were gifted,” Delphine scolds gently. “She didn’t say that of everybody.”

There’s a moment of silence, as if Avi wants to argue but can’t.

“Show me what you’ve made me,” she says instead.

Delphine fetches the package and spreads its contents out on the table.

“Wow,” Erika breathes, reaching out hesitantly to touch one of the badges. “I’ve never seen forgeries this good.”

“They’re not forgeries,” Avi and Delphine say at the same time, then look at one another and smile. “They’re replicated originals for non-professional use only,” Delphine finishes. “As if that will stand up in court some fine day.”

“Well, whatever they are, they’re gorgeous.”

“Stay for a few days,” Delphine says indulgently. “I’ll make some for you.”

At that, Avi snorts. “I’m not sure she can afford you, Cousin.”

“She’s a family friend,” Delphine chides, smiling at Erika. “I’ll give her the discount.”

Erika stumbles, suddenly aware of just how much paper like this should cost. “I’m not sure I can afford this, even with the discount,” she says with a wry chuckle.

“Sweetie,” Delphine says, looking at her affectionately, “the family discount is free.”

******

They stay at Delphine’s that night, when Avi insists she’s too tired to deal with her mother that day.

“Though I can’t imagine what the neighbors will think,” Delphine says, “with that monster parked out in my driveway.”

“That truck is a classic,” Erika says stridently, “though criminally abused.”

At that, Avi rolls her eyes. “Don’t get her started. It’ll be an hour of compression drives and cam ratios.”

“Cam drives and compression ratios,” Erika corrects automatically.

Avi stares at her over the rim of her glass of wine for a moment, then shakes her head. “There’s not a word in that sentence I care about.”

“Are you sure you two want separate rooms?” Delphine asks, amused, glancing back and forth between the two.

“Delphine,” Avi mutters, embarrassed.

“It’s okay,” Erika says, and shrugs at Delphine. She’s almost sure she’s had a little bit too much wine, and that the alcohol is what’s prompting her to speak so freely. “Avi’s still not sure if she still hates me or not. I don’t completely blame her. This is the first time we’ve ever really gotten along. I have a history of putting her life in danger and lying to her, so even I’m surprised we’ve made it this long without killing one another.” She pauses, frowning. “Then again, she did give me a black eye and shoot me.”

“I told you to move,” Avi growls.

“And actually, this is supposed to be the end of the line for me. I’m pretty sure she only let me hitch a ride because she felt sorry for me.”

For some reason, at that, Avi looks ashamed. “All those things, they happened a long time ago,” she says softly, her father’s words about allies echoing in her mind. “It’s possible you’ve changed.”

Erika looks at Avi over the rim of her wine glass. “And it’s possible I haven’t.”

“I told you, Avi,” Delphine interrupts gently, smiling at both of them, “I see only good intentions.”

******

Things bounce back to awkward the next morning, but it’s only half as bad as it had been before.

“Are you coming with me to Mother’s?” Avi asks over breakfast. Delphine has left them to eat alone, citing another engagement, and Avi is almost glad that they’re able to struggle through the morning without someone watching their every move.

Erika shrugs listlessly. “I don’t know, Avi. Maybe I should just go ahead and cut out.”

Avi’s voice is inscrutable. “You think so?”

Erika sucks her bottom lip between her teeth, staring at Avi silently. She looks torn and on edge, like she wants to go just as much as she wants to stay.

“I’ve been alone for a very long time,” she says finally.

“I have too.”

“It’s been 14 years, Avi. The first time I met you, my father nearly got us all killed. The second time didn’t end well either.”

“True, but nobody died.”

“What are you trying to say? You want to team up? Travel together for a little while?”

Avi sighs, looking out the window of Delphine’s breakfast nook. The garden outside is beautiful, vibrant and teeming with life. “I don’t know.” When she looks back, her expression is stark. She’s been thinking about what Erika had said that night at the cabin, about how it had resonated with her even though she’d wanted to deny it. “I’m getting tired of it, Erika. Tired of the stress, tired of the loneliness. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have a friend to share that with, at least for a while.”

Erika laughs softly. “Since when did we become friends?”

“Fine,” Avi concedes. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to have an acquaintance to share that with for a while.”

Erika isn’t entirely sure how they got here. Since her Dad was killed, she’s travelled alone. For the first few years, she’d been sure she’d never be able to travel with anyone ever again, as if doing so would be tantamount to replacing him. Now she wakes up alone in strange motel rooms, tries to remember which city she’s in that day, and works harder than should be necessary to find a reason to keep going. And Avi, she feels familiar. Erika recognizes it’s ridiculous. They share a handful of adventures from way back, the same shared, basic understanding of what drives a hunter, and little else.

The thing is, though, she’s lonely too.

“So maybe we give it a try,” Erika says hesitantly, because familiar feels like it might be enough. She shrugs one shoulder, and looks away. “A month. A trial run. If we drive each other crazy, we walk away. No hard feelings.”

“A month,” Avi echoes, and the deal is done.

******

“Delphine says she only needs a few days,” Avi says, chattering because she’s nervous. “She’ll make you the full package. I don’t know if you have any idea what that would cost you on the open market, but you can safely assume that your ass is indebted to her for the rest of your life.”

Erika just nods, because they’re standing in front of the front porch of Avi’s mother’s house. It’s a larger structure than Delphine’s and deeper in the heart of the Garden District. It has the feel of something discerningly old; it’s not just the stucco, mostly smooth but with the occasional pock-mark, or the weathered green shutters. It’s not the elaborate wrought iron railing lining the porch from top to bottom, like frames on a series of antique photos, each one calling attention to a window running eight feet from top to bottom. It’s not even the garden, clearly cultivated over years, or the trees that stretch high into the sky, towering over top of the roof of the two story home. It’s something else, an air to the place that speaks of something grounded in the earth and timeless.

“Is your family famous or something?” Erika asks finally, because Avi still hasn’t even started up the steps of the front porch, and she’s afraid they’re going to be mistaken for trespassing tourists soon and promptly escorted out of the neighborhood.

Avi doesn’t really respond, moving her head in a motion that could be either yes or no.

“Because this place looks kind of fancy.”

“Everything over here looks fancy,” Avi says finally, shrugging her shoulders as if she’s preparing for a fight. “Everything here is better than you, and wants you to know it.”

The voice drifts softly down to them from above, but its impact is as startling as if Avi’s mother had materialized in front of them.

“Avigail Josephine Paris Beauvais, how long are you going to stand down there, looking at my door?”

Erika can’t help but jump, looking up with wide eyes to see one of the most intimidating women she’s ever seen looking back down at her.

“And look,” the woman continues, “you’ve brought a guest. Come in so you can introduce us properly, Avigail.”

Erika is the first to move. “Let’s go meet your Mom,” she says, sure she’s enjoying this entirely too much.


	6. Chapter 6

14 Years Earlier

Having her mother in their little Natchez home was kind of like trying to trap a hurricane in a bathtub.

“She will have choices, Beau.”

Her mother is the only person she’s ever known who could make her Daddy this angry. There’s a passion between them still; they still love one another, she’s certain of it. They’re star-crossed lovers who couldn’t make it work, just like she imagines all of those couples she reads about in the fairy tales. She’s seen it up close, when people from different worlds try to merge them into one. Pieces stick out and don’t fit, and sometimes there’s nothing for it but to admit that they were wrong to try and make them in the first place.

“She’s had choices, Nannette. When you left to go to New Orleans, she had the choice to go with you. She chose to stay here.”

She’s not sure which one of them the words sting more, her mother, who had stiffly accepted her shy and stuttered decision that she’d prefer to stay, or her father, who has never quite gotten over Nannette’s leaving.

Her mother softens slightly. She raises a hand, putting it on Beau’s chest, and Avi watches as her father practically melts. “I’m not taking her away from you,” she says softly. “And if she wants to be a hunter, Beau, I can’t stop her. She’ll follow in your footsteps no matter what I say, if that’s what she wants.” Her voice drops to a comforting murmur. “I know you want the best for her. Give her a chance to learn a little bit more about the world from books and not from the front seat of your truck.”

He stiffens, and she knows she’s pushed things a little too far. “She’s a fine girl,” Nannette says proudly, and a little sadly. “A beautiful girl, and that’s all down to you. You’ve raised her right, Beau. Just let me have a little time. That’s all I’m asking. She’ll stay with me during the school year and with you during the summers, and you’re welcome in the house any time. You know that. You’ve always been welcome.” 

She moves her hand from his chest up to his cheek, and something about the way her father leans into the touch about breaks Avi’s heart. “But I’ll be so lonely here all alone,” he says, the words directed at both of them, and there’s such a deep sadness in his voice that it nearly brings tears to her eyes, “without my baby girl.”

With those words, Avi knows it’s done. Her decision is made for her.

The week before school starts, her father drives her down to New Orleans.

“It’s just for a little while, baby girl,” he says, hands wrapped tightly around the wheel. He’s staring straight forward and has been for most of the trip, except for the quick glances he keeps stealing her way. “Your mother is right. You can’t make a choice unless you know there is one.”

She’s 16, about to start the 11th grade in a strange city.

Her mother’s house is nothing like their home back in Natchez. That looks like a shack in comparison to this, with its tree lined yard and riotous blooms of bougainvillea. It’s huge and imposing and impersonal, and she hates it already.

“I don’t want to be here,” she says with a sniffle, and watches as her father’s hands tighten on the wheel so tightly that his knuckles blanch white.

“It’s just for a little while,” he says again.

Later, she watches him drive away from the porch of her mother’s big house, tears streaming down her face.

******

Her Grand-mére Rive’s hands are papery and dry when she puts one on each of Avi’s cheeks, turning her head slowly from side to side.

“Mama,” Nannette chides, because Avi is looking at her grandmother with wide, terrified eyes. “Give the child a hug, not an inspection.”

Avi can hear the tinkle of activity in the background and the wave of children’s voices raised in excitement.

“Hmm,” her grandmother hums. She doesn’t do as instructed, because Rive Paris is mistress of this domain and she knows it. “This girl is special,” she says finally, giving Avi’s cheek a soft pat. “It’s good you’ve finally brought her to us.”

Avi’s childhood memories of her grandmother are hazy and vague. She remembers a thickly accented voice on a woman who stares down at her, always assessing. She remembers perfect posture and an elegant way of moving that makes everything Grand-mére Rive does look like a dance, and cups of steaming hot coffee clinking softly down onto saucers. All those things seem to be the same, though her hair is gloriously, flamboyantly gray now, feathered back from her face. Her skin is barely lined and nearly flawless, her eyes the same enticing almond shape as Avi’s. She looks regal and sly all at once, as if she can both keep secrets and create the kind of scandals that make them.

“We’ve invited your Aunts and Uncles and Cousins,” Nannette says. “We’ve thrown you a small little party. Maybe you’ll want to change out of your traveling clothes.”

When Avi comes back downstairs, smoothing down the front of her best dress, her small little party turns out to be a backyard full of people she barely knows, most of them relatives. There’s sherbet punch and tiny little sandwiches, petits fours, turtle pralines, and some of the ripest, plumpest fruit Avi has seen in a long time.

“Don’t let this overwhelm you, Avigail,” Grand-mére Rive murmurs in her ear, coming up beside her and sliding an arm over her shoulder. “All of the people you see here are family. They will love you and protect you. They will offer you everything you need, never ask for anything in return, and they’ll expect the same of you. It’s a beautiful thing, family.”

Avi’s been quite happy with the family she’s known up until now – her Daddy, her Uncle Etienne, and even her Cousin Henri, when he’s not being a pain. She’s not she sure wants any more family than that, especially not this yard full of near strangers, all of them expecting her to sacrifice unknown bounties in their favor.

“Come now,” Grand-mére Rive says, her grip tightening on Avi’s shoulder. “Let’s meet your Cousins.”

******

Delphine is okay, she decides. She’s been over a few times since the party, always talking so much that Avi doesn’t really need to. She seems to know everyone in the whole Parrish, and doesn’t shy away from sharing the juiciest tidbits of gossip.

“That’s Martha Williams,” Delphine says under her breath, waving back cheerfully at the woman waving at them. “She thinks her husband is running around with other women. She came to Grand-mére Rive just last week for a spell to keep him faithful.”

Avi listens and smiles dutifully, which is all Delphine appears to expect. It’s the first day of school, and her mother has sent her off with a backpack full of supplies and a packed lunch as well as money. “So you can do whichever feels best,” she’d said that morning, adding a banana to the brown paper bag into which she’d already put a sandwich, chips, and a cup of pudding. “I know how it is to be new, Avi.”

Avi’s not completely sure what that means, since her mother has lived in New Orleans almost all her life. She imagines she could be referring to the years she lived in Natchez, but it’s not as if anyone there could have afforded to put on airs.

In Natchez, she’d gone to public school. Here, her mother has enrolled her in St. John’s. The collar of her starched white shirt is tight and itchy around her throat, and the blue and green plaid tie feels like it’s choking her. The plaid skirt feels all wrong, too; it’s something she never would have worn to school back home, but here it’s the uniform, and soon she finds herself in a growing crowd of girls all dressed as she is.

Cousin Delphine has prepared her as best she can, listing out all of the major players and sketching out the social hierarchy. “I’m not going to lie to you, Avi,” she’d said seriously, just the night before. “You’re not going to fit in. You’re an outsider and you’re a Paris, and these girls are afraid of both of those things.”

Her grandmother, Rive Paris, and her mother, Nannette Paris, both have the sight. They know the secrets of New Orleans’ rich and powerful, most of whom have snuck over to the Paris house looking for help, favors, protection, visions of the future, and, on occasion, curses. It’s rumored that Rive Paris can make a man a Senator or make him a pauper depending on the twist of her wrist.

“There are all kinds of rumors,” Delphine had continued, rolling her eyes. “Don’t believe anything you hear about orgies or goat sacrifices. They all just wish they were as interesting as they think we are.”

It doesn’t take long for Avi to realize that Delphine was right. She’s not going to fit in.

“Look,” a particularly vicious girl says, “it’s the little witch girl, come crawling up from the swamp.”

At lunch, Avi sits with Delphine and eats the lunch her mother packed, telling herself that she doesn’t care one whit about what the other girls think.

******

The tie comes off as soon as she leaves school grounds.

“See you tomorrow, Avi,” Delphine says with a wave, because she doesn’t live in the big house with Grand-mére Rive, like Avi and her mother. “It’ll get better or you’ll get more used to it, one.”

It’s not entirely reassuring.

Her mother is out when she gets back home; she trudges up the front steps and into the foyer, immediately dropping her backpack to the floor, and wonders if her Daddy will come get her if she begs enough.

“The foyer is not a repository for your clutter.” Grand-mére Rive’s voice is icy, and Avi’s had to deal with enough at school that day to not be ready for it at home, too, so she can’t help the tears that spring to her eyes. Grand-mére Rive must see them, because when she speaks again, her voice is softer. “You can pick it up later. For now, you’ll come with me.”

Basements in New Orleans homes are practically unheard of, so Avi gets led back to the back of the house, to a room that’s been locked since she got there.

“It’s time you started learning the family business,” Grand-mére Rive says, pulling a key out of her pocket. The door slides back soundlessly on its well-oiled hinges, revealing a room with floor to ceiling shelves on one side and a wide, scarred wooden table on the other. The shelves are packed with small glass jars, some of them containing herbs and some of them containing liquids of various shades and consistencies. Almost everything is labeled with beautiful, flowing calligraphy scrawled across bits of paper that are yellowing and curling with age. There are other bits and pieces lying around, leather squares and balls of leather twine. There’s a mortar and pestle on the table; it’s a huge, stone thing, with chips around the edges. There are knives, too, an assortment of them laid out with neat precision, and Avi gapes.

“What is all this?” she asks, though part of her knows. Her father has used some of these things before, in spells or for protection. She recognizes some of the names: angelica root, good for exorcisms, and bramble leaf, which can be woven into a wreath with rowan and ivy and used for protection against evil spirits.

“This is our legacy,” her grandmother says proudly. “Paris blood runs through your veins. You’re a strong girl, but sometimes, strength is not enough. Your father has taught you to hunt the monsters in the dark. I will teach you to command them to your will.”

******

It sounds way more dramatic than it is. Mainly, Grand-mére Rive makes her memorize the names of more herbs than she’d even known existed before. She has to learn their uses, like which ones strengthen spells and which ones can be dangerous. There are ones that work well together and ones that should never, ever be put together, and it’s honestly much more difficult than school.

When her mother finds out, she just shakes her head and laughs. Avi takes that to mean that she’s a sadist, because she clearly went through this at some point in her past and yet makes no move to remove Avi from Grand-mére Rive’s clutches.

On some days, Delphine joins them, but she’s far more advanced than Avi. Besides, Grand-mére Rive says that Delphine might just have the sight, so they disappear sometimes, and Avi’s sure that whatever they do is arcane and absolutely, stupefyingly boring.

“Why aren’t they scared of us,” she asks Delphine one day at lunch. She’s pretty much resigned herself to being a social outcast, to sharp barbs and haughty, mocking stares from the other girls, all of whom still think they’re better than her. She doesn’t completely understand why, because as far as she can tell, being of the Paris clan should offer her greater social status, not consign her to the social dungeon.

Delphine smiles around her bite of apple. “That’s the thing, Avi. They are scared. They’re plenty scared. That’s why they act like they do.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sure it does.” Delphine has a way of saying everything as if it’s a certainty. “They think they can keep us down that way. They don’t like the way it feels, not having power, so they pretend like they do.”

Avi thinks about Grand-mére Rive and all the things she’s learned from her. “Aren’t they worried about what we could do to them?”

As far as she can tell, Grand-mére Rive doesn’t dabble in black magick. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t know it. Besides, the others can’t know that. It’s part of what makes her grandmother as popular as she is among those seeking favor.

“You been to the zoo, Avi?”

Avi nods slowly, knowing Delphine’s got a point to be made but not quite sure what it is yet.

“When you go to the zoo and you see the tigers in their cages, are you scared?”

“No.”

“Because they can’t hurt you, right? Because they’re on one side of the fence and you’re on the other.”

Avi shrugs. “Of course.”

Delphine looks around her with a wicked, wicked smile. “See, Avi, that’s the thing. These people think they have a fence too.”

******

She sees her Daddy at Christmas, because she can’t bear being away from him any longer. He drives down to New Orleans and picks her up after lunch, and they go down to Café du Monde. They eat beignets, drink chicory coffee, and watch the tourists in town for the holidays. The wind is bitterly cold that close to the Mississippi, so they’re bundled up tight in layers of clothes and jackets, with scarves, gloves, and hats to fill in the gaps.

“Are you happy here, baby girl?” he asks her, brushing powdered sugar off of his gloves.

Avi thinks about school, with all those girls who sneer at her, and of her Grand-mére Rive, stern but affectionate. “I miss you,” she says honestly, because it’s the thing that matters most.

He doesn’t ask again, knowing not to push.

“Have you been busy?” she asks. She’s starting to shiver and is about to suggest that they find some place a little warmer, but he’s already picking up their trash and taking it over to the bin.

“Your Uncle Etienne and I have been working on some things,” he says vaguely, holding out his arm. She wraps hers around it and they head back to where he’s parked the truck. Once there, with the heater blowing hot air onto her feet, he speaks again. “He tipped me off to a shapeshifter in Bayou La Batre. I had him cornered, but you know how those shapeshifters can be.”

“Slippery,” Avi says, and it’s a grim joke they’ve shared since the first time they saw the leftovers of a shapeshifter’s switch. Beau had barreled straight through it, thinking they were still on the chase, his feet flying up in the air as he skidded on the pile of ooze – leftover blood, skin, and hair –his backside landing smack in the middle of the worst of it.

They both laugh, and Avi reaches forward, running her fingers over the familiar surface of the dash wistfully.

“We’ll pick his trail up again,” Beau finishes, a graceful recounting of his loss.

“How are things with your mother?” he asks a moment later, his voice carefully neutral.

“Okay,” Avi admits. Her mother loves her. She can see that, even if Nannette is not the best at showing it. It’s as if she’s forgotten how to be a mother, in the years they’ve been apart, and is sometimes too affectionate and sometimes too distant. She’s yet to find the place in the middle, where things can be easy and comfortable between them, and Avi’s not sure how to relate to her. They seem so different. Her mother is like a bird, regal and just out of reach, while Avi is planted firmly on the ground.

The holidays fly by quickly, and Beau is gone too soon.

“I know, honey,” her mother says, drawing her into a hug. It’s the most natural thing she’s done yet, to let Avi cry against her shoulder. “It’s a hard thing, letting your father go.”

******

The other most exciting thing about the holidays is the arrival of Delphine’s mother, Lucienne.

“Everybody says she’s just gone away for a little while,” Delphine had told her long ago, when Avi had first asked, “but she’s really in jail.”

The first thing she does when she sees Avi is to draw her into a tight hug. “Look at what a beautiful girl you’ve become,” she says, drawing back far enough to kiss each of Avi’s cheeks. There is something about her that makes Avi feel loved instantly. “And where is my sister?” Tante Lucienne, as she has told Avi to call her, yells out. She doesn’t worry about propriety nearly as much as Avi’s own mother does. She is, instead, loud, brash, and affectionate. She’s always in motion, and Avi rarely sees her without a mischievous look in her eyes.

Nannette drifts down the stairs with the slow cadence of royalty. “There’s no need to shout, Lucienne. I’m just upstairs, not halfway around the world in Egypt.”

“And good to see you too, Nannette.”

The sight of her flustered mother being folded up in an enthusiastic hug amuses Avi greatly.

“Can you see what they’ve done to my hair in that prison?” Lucienne says irritably. “It’s going to take months to straighten this mess out.”

“Luci!”

“What, Nannette? The child already knows. It’s no big thing. The only thing to be ashamed of is that I got caught.”

According to Delphine, who seems incredibly proud of the fact, Tante Lucienne is, “The greatest forger in all the world. Put her work next to an original, and you’d think the original is the fake.”

“And where do you think her Daddy gets all of his paper from anyway?” Lucienne continues, barely stopping to breathe. “Just because you’re a fool where that man is concerned doesn’t mean I’m going to let him run around the countryside with an inferior product. Anyway, from what I hear, your Avi will need my services someday soon. Beau tells me she’s already quite the little hunter.”

“Because all of you encourage her in this madness!”

“Your protest would be more believable if you weren’t trying to follow in the footsteps laid out before you by Rive Paris,” Lucienne teases. “She will follow after him as you follow after Mother and Delphine follows after me. It is the way of our world.”

And then, apparently finished with that topic, Lucienne demands, “Now, let’s go make coffee. I still haven’t managed to wash away the taste of the swill they fed us in the joint.”

When Nannette offers another scandalized, “Luci!”, Tante Lucienne catches Avi’s eye and offers her a wink and an amused smile.

******

After the holidays, Grand-mére Rive decides that Avi has done well enough in her studies to move forward. She introduces her to the concept of charms, sachets, and hex bags, and tests her by putting together combinations for her to identify.

Avi looks down at the items she’d found bundled together in the little leather bag, brow furrowing as she tries to remember the things her grandmother has taught her. “Caraway seeds,” she says cautiously, “cayenne pepper, cedar, cinnamon, coltsfoot, damiana, and a lock of hair. Someone is trying to attract love, and powerfully.”

“Very good,” Grand-mére Rive says, smiling at her proudly. “Very good. You are a gifted student.”

By the end of the year, she’s moved from love spells to black magick hex bags. “Chicken bone, ague weed, tormentilla, a fingernail clipping.” Avi pauses, looking up at her grandmother. “Someone wants to cause confusion and distress. They want to do harm.”

“That’s right, Avigail. And how do we stop them?”

“To stop the spell, we burn the hex bag. To stop them? I think we impress upon them the unwise course of action they have chosen.”

At that, her grandmother laughs fondly. “Ah, your father’s influence. So strong in you.”


	7. Chapter 7

Present Day

The inside of the house is not at all what Erika had been expecting. She’s not entirely sure about Avi’s past, at least not this part of it, but there have been enough mentions of people who think they have ‘the sight’ for her to expect something with a little more… atmosphere.

“What you’re looking for you’ll find down on Bourbon Street, not here,” Avi’s mother says, shaking her head in exasperation.

It’s highly disconcerting.

Avi’s mother is nothing short of regal. It’s impossible to tell her age; she has smooth, gorgeous skin and an easy grace of movement, but her eyes are sharp. Erika finds herself blushing under their assessment, so she straightens, trying to look pleasantly impassive. Something in the other woman’s demeanor lets Erika know that anything short of authenticity will not be appreciated, which is problematic.

Most of Erika’s life is spent in a lie.

“We’re going to be in town for a few days, Mother,” Avi says, rolling her eyes at Erika’s expression, all caught with her hand in the cookie jar. “We’re staying at Delphine’s.”

“Nonsense,” her mother says immediately. “You’ll stay here. Now, who’s your friend?”

Avi smiles and affects a formal demeanor. “This is Erika Rutherford. Erika, my mother, Nannette Paris.”

Erika is surprised by sturdiness of the handshake she receives.

“Lovely to meet you, Erika. And, what is it you do?”

Avi breaks in before Erika has to explain; it’s useless, because Erika is pretty sure that Nannette Paris knows exactly what a hunter is and what they do, but it’s kind of nice to not have to say it. “She’s a hunter, too, Mother. We’re going to travel together for a little while.”

“Good. I don’t like you being out there alone.” Nannette pauses, looking up at Erika’s black eye, then says dryly, “But maybe you should find a companion who is not so prone to injury.”

“She punched me,” Erika says defensively, before she can stop herself.

Avi waves the words away. “It was an accident.”

Nannette merely shakes her head in amusement. “It’s good that you’ve come home now, Avi,” she says a moment later, as she’s leading them into the kitchen. Avi knows she’ll have coffee brewing in a second, and her mouth begins to water in anticipation. She’s never had better coffee than her mother’s.   
“I can’t see it clearly yet, but something is coming. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but it is something very important.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. There is a journey to be taken before it is found.”

Avi snorts. The prophecy is like so many she’s heard her mother give over the years – vague and insubstantial. “Well, you let me know when the static clears up on the psychic network, okay?”

“Don’t be so dismissive,” her mother scolds.

Momentarily contrite, Avi softens. “I don’t mean to be. It’s just that my life is a series of journeys, and at the end of most of them, there’s something to be found. Most of the time, it’s bad. I don’t expect that’s going to change any time in the near future.”

“You keep chasing bad things and you’re going to keep finding them.”

Sadness flickers across her mother’s face, and Avi decides to change the subject. “How is Tante Lucienne?”

“Driving me crazy. I don’t know what possessed me to suggest that she should move in.”

“Where is she?”

Nannette waves her hand vaguely. “Who knows? A brunch, a garden party, a Junior League meeting… that woman is into everything.”

“Tante Lucienne is in the Junior League?”

“She likes to play at being high society, now that she’s handed the business over to Delphine. I think it amuses her.”

“I would have thought that would be you.”

“No,” Nannette scoffs. “I tired of all that years ago. I have more important things to do with my time.”

“Like what?”

“Sleep late. Garden. Make you hex bags for protection.”

“Mother…”

“I know. I know. You’re fully capable of protecting yourself.” She holds her hands out in supplication. “Humor me, Avigail.”

Avi can’t help but smile.

“And anyway, you’ll be needing to restock your supplies, I’m sure.”

The strong scent of freshly brewed coffee has spread throughout the kitchen, and Avi can’t take it anymore. She gets up, fixing three cups.

Her momentary absence shifts Nannette’s attention to Erika, who she eyes shrewdly. “So, Erika, where are you from?”

Erika looks a little bit like a deer in headlights; Avi looks entirely too pleased by it.

“All over, really,” she says, offering Nannette what she hopes is a bright smile. She’s never been particularly good at meeting parents, or, really, at meeting anyone she wasn’t trying to con.

Nannette’s raised brow prompts more.

“California until I was 8,” Erika hurries to add, unable to shake the feeling of intimidation that’s dogged her since they stepped into the marble lined foyer. “After that, my Dad and I travelled around the country. We didn’t stay many places for long.”

Nannette takes a long sip of coffee; Erika blows on hers and waits.

“Do you want me to read for you?” she asks without the artifice Erika might have expected to come with those words.

Erika’s pretty sure she knows what Nannette means, and that it doesn’t have anything to do with Winnie the Pooh or story time. “I don’t know,” she says honestly, because she’s long been convinced that it’s best not to know what’s coming next. “If you could promise me only good things, then yes.”

“You can take your time to decide.” Nannette’s focus changes to her daughter and sharpens, peremptorily staving off any protest. “Avi, go fetch your things from Delphine’s. I’ll give Erika the tour.”

******

Erika’s pleading look does no good. Avi leaves her there with her mother, and there’s absolutely no chance for escape.

They take their coffees out to the garden. Tucked into a corner, a swing hangs from a small arbor over which ivy has run rampant. It provides the best view of the grounds, of the massive oak trees along the property line, all dressed appropriately in Spanish moss, and of the precise riot of flowers lining a small, winding walkway.

“Sit with me,” Nannette says, patting the seat next to her, and Erika sees no recourse but to do it.

For a long time, they remain silent. An absent push every now and again keeps them swinging lazily. The sun is high overhead but there’s a slight chill in the air, prompting Erika to pull her sleeves down over her hands. Occasionally, rustling heralds the arrival or a squirrel or chipmunk, and Erika feels herself drop into something like a trance at the peacefulness of it all.

“Avi could choose to stay here,” Nannette says finally, and her voice is soft, as if influenced, also, by the setting. “Would you leave a place this gorgeous and a family who loves you to go off hunting monsters?”

“No,” Erika says immediately, without thinking, and is shocked by the honest, visceral response. She clears her throat and looks for a way to cover the awkwardness she suddenly feels. “It must be hard for her.”

Nannette laughs dryly. “It’s never been hard for Avi. She took to that life like a duck to water.”

They fall into silence again. Erika traces the course of a falling leaf as it drifts slowly to the ground, joining a larger pile, and tries not to be intimidated by the serene yet commanding presence of the woman beside her.

Her concentration is so intense that Nannette’s next question surprises her.

“Why do you hunt?”

“It’s what I do,” Erika says guardedly, the response automatic. “I’m good at it and I enjoy it.”

“Do you really?”

She takes the time to think about it. It’s never easy, almost always dangerous, and often frustrating, but she’s never done anything more satisfying. “My Dad taught me how,” is how she responds, because it’s the best way she knows to sum up all of those things. “After Mom left… He could have left me too. He could have pawned me off on my grandparents or tracked her down and made her take me back, at least, but he didn’t. He made us a team. I watched out for him and he watched out for me, and together, we did this amazing, wonderful thing. We saved people’s lives. We had adventures. What could be better than that?”

She ends with a crooked smile, trying to ignore the embarrassment she feels at being so unexpectedly candid.

Nannette’s smile in response is warm. “I think you’re a good match for my Avigail.”

At that, Erika blushes in earnest. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression,” she says, carefully choosing her words. “Avi and I know each other from way back, but we’ve never really been what you’d call close.”

“I see,” Nannette says, and Erika feels as if she’s being indulged. It puts her on the defensive – everything does, from Nannette to the house to the sense of continuity and family she can see weaving through Avi’s life – and she squirms under Nannette’s assessing gaze.

“So it’s possible that you didn’t mean anything by that,” she adds, mindful of an inexplicable need to explain herself, “but I feel compelled to stress that this travelling together thing, it’s a just a trial run.”

Avi’s mother remains maddeningly unruffled. “I understand.”

“I mean, we just ran into one another again the other day – literally, like three days ago. It’d been 14 years since the last time I saw her before that.”

“Of course.”

“And it gets kind of lonely out there, you know,” Erika mutters, blush deepening. She can feel it radiating heat out through the tips of her ears, well past the point of control. “So it’s nice to have someone else around.”

Nannette nods indulgently. “I’m sure it is.”

“It might not even last through the month,” Erika continues, knowing that she should stop talking but somehow unable to do so. She feels like a child, trying to explain the unexplainable to a patient and amused adult. It’s nerves, she decides, and who wouldn’t be nervous, pinned by the attention of a woman probably well used to prying loose all sorts of secrets. “We just decided we’d team up this morning. For all I know, we might only make it a week before wanting to kill each other. She can be a little trying sometimes, you know.”

“I do.”

Erika sighs, running a hand through her hair. “And me, I’ve been by myself for the past 8 years, so I’m not exactly easy to get along with either. I’m pretty set in my ways.”

“I can imagine.”

“So all of these assumptions everyone around here keeps seeming to make, they’re kind of amusing but mostly just completely unfounded. And yes,” she adds quickly, not sure why she feels the need to justify further, “it may be true that, in the past, I’ve made some fairly questionable decisions when it comes to attractive women, but this one was driven purely by business reasons.”

“Absolutely.”

“Nothing else,” she says, gesturing vaguely,” was even a factor.”

“Of course not.”

Annoyed with herself and well aware that she’s revealed far more than was ever necessary, Erika decides to bring her rambling to a stop. “You have a very lovely home,” she concludes firmly, brow knit in a scowl.

“Thank you,” Nannette says graciously, though her lips are quirked up in a smile.

They swing for a moment more before Erika sighs again. “Please never tell Avi I said any of that.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I’m not usually so socially awkward,” she adds, fingers tightening around her now cold cup of coffee. “It’s just that everything here is a little intimidating, you included. And I certainly don’t want Avi to know that I realize she’s attractive, because that would make things really awkward. Also, I think it would negatively impact the size of her ego. By that, I mean it would inflate it even further.”

“Probably so.”

“God,” Erika mutters, cringing. “This whole conversation has been incredibly embarrassing.”

“Only for you.”

“I’m going to pretend that you’ve worked some kind of voodoo magic on me, and that’s why I couldn’t shut up.”

“It’s possible.”

Erika pauses, looks down at her coffee suspiciously, and then up at Nannette. “You’re only kidding about that part, right?”

Nannette’s smile is unaccountably unnerving. “Conceivably.”

******

When Avi gets back, Erika draws her aside and whispers fiercely, “Don’t ever leave me alone with your mother again.” When Avi doesn’t agree immediately, Erika adds, “Seriously.”

She feels somewhat better later when Avi’s loading their dirty clothes into the washing machine, and Nannette drops by to check on their progress. “Why does it smell so smoky in here?” she asks, wrinkling her nose.

“Because Avi started a forest fire,” Erika replies smugly, feeling the balance finally begin to tilt back into her favor.

“Avigail!” her mother chastises, and Avi glares at her, making her feel marginally better.

Lucienne and Delphine join them for dinner. Erika’s not sure if she’s ever been more entertained. She laughs until her sides hurt at stories made infinitely better by the skill of the people telling them.

This, she realizes midway through dinner, is what it feels like to have a family, and she misses her father even more for never letting her realize how much more they could have had if things had worked out differently.

“What?” Avi asks, catching her blinking back a few tears.

“Nothing,” Erika says roughly. “I just think my Dad would have really liked this.”

Avi nods like she understands.

******

At breakfast the next morning, Erika finds herself alone with Lucienne and resolves to say as little as possible.

“Avi tells me not to play cards with you,” the other woman says without preamble.

“You could play,” Erika replies, unable to help the note of smugness in her voice, “I just wouldn’t bet anything, if I were you.”

Lucienne’s face breaks into a wide smile, and Erika knows exactly how Delphine will look in 25 years time - gorgeous. “Excellent,” she says, slapping a palm down on the table. “Teach me all your secrets. I want to learn how to fleece these Junior League bitches.”

They spend the rest of the morning locked in the study, after which Lucienne leaves pleased and Erika leaves amused.

“Go get’em, tiger,” Erika calls out, watching Lucienne head out to practice her newly learned skills. 

“What have you done?” Avi asks, coming up behind her from out of nowhere, startling her so much she brings a hand to her chest.

“Nothing,” Erika answers immediately, innocently. Avi looks distinctly unamused, so she amends it to, “Nothing bad. I just taught her the rudiments of conning high society ladies out of their money.”

“Perfect,” Avi murmurs, shaking her head. “Just what she needs to know.”

“She’s a quick study.”

“I’m sure.”

“She said that if she wins, I get to start calling her Tante Lucienne.”

Avi closes her eyes, as if looking for patience. “Even better.”

******

Avi’s cousin Henri calls that night.

“What is it?” her mother asks; the look in Avi’s eyes is two generations of familiar.

“Three men died in their beds. Doors and windows were locked, and there was no forced entry”

“And?”

Avi grins. “And they drowned.”

“So you’ll be leaving us then,” Nannette notes smoothly. “It’s to be expected.”

“Mother…”

“I’m sorry, Avigail. I just don’t like to see my girl go, and especially not so soon.”

Erika makes herself scarce while they say their good-byes the following morning. The last thing they do on their way out of town is to stop by Delphine’s to pick up the paper she’s made for Erika.

She hands them over, beaming. “I had to get rid of that black eye, but I think I’ve done an excellent job.”

Erika can only agree.

“So where are you off to now, Cousin?”

“Big Spring, Texas.”

Delphine laughs. “Sounds exciting.”

“Three men drowned in their beds.”

“I’ll never understand your excitement over these kinds of things.” She pauses to shake her head. “So tell me, what kind of big bad are you going off to square up against now?”

“I don’t know,” Avi says thoughtfully, but a grin of excitement teases at her lips. “It could be a water spirit, a demon, or maybe even witches.”

At this, Erika looks up and shivers. “God,” she mutters darkly, “I hate witches.”


	8. Chapter 8

Twelve Years Earlier

It’s freaky enough already, young girls dying in their beds, looking more like crones than 20-somethings, but this one hits uncomfortably close to home. Twenty has been a big birthday for Erika, in ways that other people probably feel 30 or 40. Twenty means adulthood, which is sort of ridiculous given that it’s been a long, long time since Erika felt like a child. It’s a nothing number, really, but it feels like a milestone.

So the last thing she wants, not six months into 20, is to stand over the desiccated corpse of some girl who, just two days before, had been getting ready to head back to college to start her junior year.

“I know it seems impossible,” the coroner is saying, and she tries to remember to look at him with all of the seriousness a junior government scientist should possess, “but this is Britney Mason.”

“How do you think it happened, Doctor?” Ricky asks, something about his tone implying that this is a subtle test of the doctor’s skills.

Her Dad’s got the senior government scientist thing down pat. He’s appropriately grave and professional and looks startlingly authentic in his suit and tie. Appearances get you 90% of the way there, he tells her every time they pull on a ruse. Most people don’t question things. You tell them something, and they believe it.

“I don’t know. There’s progeria, of course, but you’re not going to see the onset of that this late in life. It’s a pediatric disease. People with progeria generally don’t even live into their 20s.”

He sounds so perplexed, so absolutely and completely baffled, that Erika has to stifle a laugh.

“Could she have come into contact with any toxins?” she asks, to cover her gaffe. “Some sort of radiation, maybe, or toxic substance?”

“It doesn’t seem likely,” the coroner says, quite literally scratching his head over it. “I don’t know what the explanation could be there. Actually, I was hoping you could tell me.” He pauses, a look of confusion flitting over his features. “I’m not even sure how the CDC knew we had a cluster of cases like this. I didn’t call anyone.”

Ricky, unruffled, answers with a clipped, “We do routine monitoring.”

The coroner, appropriately cowed, merely shakes his head, looking down at the corpse once again. “Well, whatever it is, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Do you still have the other bodies?” Erika asks.

“Just one of them,” the coroner replies. “I’ve pended the findings of their autopsies, but I couldn’t really justify holding onto the bodies. This has been distressing enough for the families as it is. They needed to bury their loved ones.”

The second body looks just like the first: hair that has thinned and grayed, skin that has sagged into a fan of wrinkles, sunken eyes, and the general overall frailty of old age.

“There have been four of these, you say?” Ricky asks, and the coroner, after another brief refrain outlining his confusion and befuddlement, goes off to fetch them copies of the autopsy files.

“What do you think it is?” Erika asks softly, once he’s left them alone.

Ricky stares down at the corpse and shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

******

They charm their way into the house of the most recently deceased girl, Britney Mason. Her Dad has changed once again. He wears the white collar and black suit of a priest and walks with a pronounced limp. He carries a cane in one hand and depends on it heavily. It both engenders sympathy and explains her presence.

“My driver,” he says with a kindly smile, as if grateful to her for her service.

Erika slips upstairs while Ricky offers the grieving mother his condolences.

“We’re not even Catholic,” she sobs, pressing her face into Ricky’s shoulder as the tears flow.

“We’re all God’s creatures,” he replies, patting her back gently.

Erika finds the girl’s room after a few false starts. It’s got the air of something abandoned in time. The calendar on the wall is turned to September but the date reads two years before, as if Britney had counted off the days until she left for college and never really returned to inhabit this space fully after. Erika spies a picture of her on the vanity. She’s smiling, her arms thrown around the shoulders of two other girls. They’re sunburned, posed in front of a river somewhere, radiating the kind of careless childhood Erika hadn’t ever really had.

She tries to picture that girl here in this room. It probably hadn’t felt like hers anymore, not once she came back from a year of the dorms at college. It had been a relic of the past, just a bed and a closet, a place to sleep in between a couple of road trips and a summer job.

Her hands trace efficiently over the top shelf of Britney’s closet. She peeks through boxes and looks through drawers, but it isn’t until she’s running her hands under the sides of the mattress that she finds what she’s looking for.

“Oh my,” Erika murmurs, holding the hex bag up and watching it twist in her grasp.

******

“Witchcraft?” Ricky echoes. He’s got his collar undone and his jacket off and has cranked the air conditioning up to its highest setting. “I hate witches.”

“Well, that’s what we’ve got. We can only assume that there’s one of these in each of those girl’s rooms.”

“How did they get there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the killer brought them with him or maybe it’s someone the girls know. Maybe it’s one of their friends.”

Erika knows what that means. It had been easy to pick out the best friend that afternoon, the way she was sobbing her eyes out a definite clue.

She’s the one who has to ask the questions, of course, because even if it’s creepy to have Erika show up at the park, plopping down onto the bench beside a still sniffling stranger, it would have been even creepier for Ricky to do it.

“Look,” Erika says, because she’s done this enough times to know that there are moments when the truth is better than a lie. Well, at least parts of the truth. “I think someone murdered your friend.”

The girl looks up, startled, instinctively scooting further down the bench. She’s got the kind of glint in her eye that means that she’s about to run, so Erika wraps a hand around her wrist and holds her tight.

“I know this is strange, but you’ve got to listen to me. I’m here to help.”

“Who are you?” the girl asks, eyes wide.

“A private detective,” Erika lies easily, this one of the parts that won’t really matter. She picks the name of the earliest victim, and pushes forward. “Marci Graham’s family hired me to look into the death of their daughter.”

“Marci Graham? Who?”

“She died under similar circumstances.” Erika draws closer to the girl, cutting the distance separating them by half, and lowers her voice. “We think they were killed by the same person.”

“Murdered?” If possible, the girl’s eyes widen even further.

“You’re Britney’s best friend, aren’t you?”

She gets a solemn nod in response.

“How well did Britney know Marci Graham?”

The girl shrugs. “I don’t even know who that is. I’ve never heard of her. Britney never mentioned her.”

“Shelley Hurst?”

Another shrug.

Erika feels herself growing a little desperate. “Autumn Sumners?”

“I’ve never heard of any of these people. Maybe they went to a different high school or something. No, wait. Autumn? I think I’ve heard the name, but Britney and I didn’t really know her. Is she supposed to have known her?”

Erika sighs. “I guess not. When was the last time you saw Britney alive.”

“The night she… The night it…”

“You were with her the night she died?”

The girl shudders. “I was probably the last person to talk to her or something.”

Erika lets a moment pass, because the girl looks like she’s about to start crying again. “Where we you at?”

“We’d just gone for a drink, you know. Nothing special.”

“And then?”

“I don’t know. I had to get home. Britney wasn’t ready to leave, so I left her at the bar.”

The girl stiffens, hand coming to her mouth to stifle a gasp. “You don’t think someone from the bar killed her, did you?”

“I don’t know. What bar?”

“Crazy Eights, over on Highland.”

It’s slim, Erika thinks, but at least it’s a lead. “Thanks,” she says, offering the girl a smile. “And if you don’t mind, keep this between us for right now. If it gets around that I’m investigating, the killer might get spooked.”

“Okay,” the girl says voice, quivering. “Just, god…” She slumps over, arms wrapped protectively around her stomach. When she speaks again, her voice is barely more than an exhalation of breath. “Murdered.”

******

Crazy Eights is practically deserted, but then again, it is a Monday night. Erika slides the bartender a $20 and pictures of the four girls.

“That one was in here this weekend,” he says, pointing to Britney. “I might’ve seen her in here once or twice,” he adds, pointing to Shelley,” but she wasn’t a regular.”

She thinks it’s a bust, but her Dad thinks that maybe whoever this witch is, he or she doesn’t hunt in the same place every night.

“We could check out a few more places,” Erika offers. “Split up. Cover more ground.”

It’s how she ends up at Taverna, tired and dejected. She’s been to a couple of places, tried exchanging flirty smiles instead of $20s for leads, and found that neither really gets her anywhere, case wise. Yes, the bartenders say, they’ve seen some of the girls. No, they don’t remember anything strange. No, none of them were really regulars.

She’s pretty much done for the night, she thinks, giving in and ordering a beer.

She’s halfway through it when she feels the heat of someone next to her. When she turns, she’s met with a gorgeous smile and a pair of almost hypnotic blue eyes that match the star sapphire hanging from the woman’s neck perfectly.

“Bartender,” the woman says, her voice husky and low, “two more.”

It’s hard to tell, because the woman’s skin is flawless, but Erika pegs her in her mid-30s. Which, Erika realizes with a smirk, means she’s total cougar bait.

They could do small talk, and they do for a little while, but this hunting expedition hasn’t yielded any prey, and there’s only so long before her dad gets back to the motel room. She figures she’s got a couple of hours, at least, because he’ll probably end up in a poker game, or maybe even knock back a few at the bar, once he’s reached the same conclusion she has. It’s enough time for her to draw this out a little longer and still have time, later, for the evening to end like she’s pretty sure it’s going to end, but she doesn’t particularly feel like wasting it.

“So,” she says, finishing off the beer the woman bought for her. It’s said with her best come hither smile and a challenging arch of the brow, so it’s no surprise when the woman slips a bill from her purse, slides it onto the bar, then reaches for her hand. Erika laughs as she’s pulled from her stool, but she stumbles eagerly out of the bar behind her.

Maybe this night won’t be a complete bust after all.

******

There’s definitely something to be said for older women, she decides later. The woman is on her as soon as they step into the motel room. They head straight for the bed, which is fine by Erika, because everything that happens after is a complete and total education.

The things she now knows she’d say about older women, if asked: skill, skill, skill, experience, skill, enthusiasm, and stamina.

She’s a little surprised by the last one, because frankly, she wouldn’t have imagined herself as the one having to beg for a break. So she doesn’t, because she does have her pride. Instead, she rolls them over so she’s on bottom, hands sliding up the woman’s back as she arches up to her for another kiss.

It’s how her father finds them. Granted, it’s not as mortifying as it could have been, but it’s still pretty bad.

The next few minutes pass in a bit of a blur. She’s vaguely aware that her companion is decidedly irritated by the interruption, but really, it’s not as if she’s going to kick her Dad out so that she can finish out her booty call. So, pushing embarrassment aside, she manages to hustle the woman out of their room as genteelly as possible, and granted, it’s not very, and gather together enough of her clothes so that, after a quick trip to the bathroom, she looks almost normal again. Except, maybe, for the part where her hair is an absolute mess and her lips are clearly well-kissed and swollen.

Her father just looks at her. It’s clear that neither of them has any clue what to say, and she is convinced this is going to continue to be awkward for a very, very long time.

“Did you find anything?” she asks, trying desperately to return things to normal.

It doesn’t work. Her father runs his hands through his hair and sinks down onto her bed, jumping up immediately when he remembers what just happened there. She thinks she’s about to hear some sort of tirade, that maybe this will be one of those moments where he tries to stumble painfully through parenting, but he doesn’t. Instead, his eyes widen and he looks down at the bed again. Erika prepares for a freak out or a heart attack, because his expression is absolutely not promising.

What she gets instead is the sight of him frantically running his hands under the edge of the mattress. And that’s kind of disturbing and weird she thinks, until he pulls out a hex bag and holds it up for her to see.

That’s definitely much, much more disturbing and weird.

******

Things get even more awkward when she has to admit that she doesn’t exactly know the woman’s name.

“This is… How…” Ricky’s face just keeps getting redder and redder. The hex bag stares up at them accusingly from the middle of the table, and Erika is pretty sure there’s never been a worse ending to an evening that started out so promisingly. “Do you do this often?” he finally asks, then cringes.

She’s not sure to what he’s referring, exactly, so she takes her best guess.

“No. Never. Hardly ever. Maybe just once or twice,” she rambles, because it isn’t as if she does, really.   
She hasn’t even been with all that many people, which is not surprising, because it’s excruciatingly difficult to get her game on when she’s always sharing a motel room with her Dad. She hadn’t even lost her virginity until 19, and even then, she’d really only been able to work it out because they’d been in Phoenix for a while, and Javie’s nephew Efrain was cute enough and the kind of guy who wouldn’t make a big deal out of it.

“You do realize what could have happened, don’t you?”

She can’t help but laugh at this, because she figures that Dads generally warn their daughters about things like babies and STDs, not witches with ulterior motives who leave dried up and desiccated corpses in their wake.

“This is serious,” her Dad says, and he sounds so distressed that she’s immediately contrite. “You could have died.”

He looks so shattered at the thought that it’s instantly sobering.

“At least now we know who she is,” she offers meekly.

“Oh yeah, that’s helpful. We know it’s some woman you met in a bar. We don’t know her name or where she lives or anything else about her, other than that she apparently likes her girls young.”

He turns bright red as soon as he says it, and Erika’s back on the verge of laughter, when it hits her.

“She likes her girls young,” she repeats, and she doesn’t know all of the implications, but she’s starting to feel a little sick.

******

The only plan they can think of is to go back to the bar Erika had been in the night before and see if they can find out anything about their mystery woman.

“You mean you didn’t get her name?”

It figures that the same bartender is there, and that he remembers seeing them leave the bar with really only one purpose in mind. She’s not so happy about the look on his face, trapped somewhere between a leer and a sneer, so it’s a good thing they’re the only patrons.

She wraps her hand in his shirtfront and pulls him down with a hard jerk. He’s clearly startled, and more than a little intimidated by the glare she’s pinned firmly on him, so that when she asks again, she gets a much more satisfactory answer.

“Uh, yeah. I’ve seen her in here before. I think she said her name was Hannah.”

“Last name?” Erika growls, tightening her grip.

“I don’t know. Something with a J, I think. Uh… Jaeger. That’s it, because she made a joke about it once, because you know, the liquor…”

“That’s all we need,” Ricky says, patting Erika on the shoulder and offering the still trembling bartender a winning smile. “Thanks so much for your cooperation.”

It takes most of the day to track down Hannah Jaeger’s address, because she’s relatively new in town. In the end, they mostly luck into it, because they’ve tried every other avenue they can think of, so ducking into the largest real estate office in town on the off-chance that she might have bought some property lately is, all things considered, a very, very long shot.

As such, Erika’s so surprised when the agent responds to her casual name dropping of Hannah Jaeger as her reference that Ricky has to step up and take over.

“She loves the new house,” he enthuses, clapping his hand down hard on Erika’s shoulder to pull her out of her shock. “We were wondering if you had anything else listed on her street. It’s a lovely neighborhood.”

“Beal Street?” the agent ponders, tilting her head to the side and pursing her lips. “I think I might have a listing or two.”

She comes back with three fliers, each of them laying out the price and specifics of the houses in question. “Now, this one isn’t on Beal Street, but it’s still in the Ravenwood subdivision,” she’s saying, and Erika has to consciously force herself to pay attention, because the speed with which the woman rattles off information makes it all meld into an almost soothing lullaby.

It’s when they get to the last house that all of that effort pays off. “It’s a lovely three bedroom,” the agent continues, giving her best, sales-winning smile. “It has an absolutely adorable yard and a modern, really quite spacious kitchen. Even better, it’s just three houses down from your friend Ms. Jaeger!”

After thanking her profusely for all of her help and promising to be back soon so that they can schedule some times to go out and see the houses, Erika and Ricky make their escape. “So,” he says, squinting out at the now setting sun, “we’ve got it narrowed down to four.”

The four houses in question are on opposite ends of the street. The occupants of one are at home, and a careful reconnaissance of two others verify that they’re not the house in question.

“Time for a little visit,” Ricky says, using his lock picks to jimmy open the door to the last. It’s dark inside, and still, and they both move quietly through the house, doing a quick and thorough search.

“Nothing,” Ricky says later, when they meet back up in the living room. “No spell books, no black altars… maybe we’ve got the wrong house. Maybe the realtor was off about the location.”

Erika is staring idly at a grouping of pictures on the mantle, trying to work through the possibilities in her head, when she sees it.

“Look at that,” she says, pointing to the largest of the group. In it, a woman stares straight at the camera, a cigarette at her lips. She’s got her head thrown back and is laughing, and all around her are men and women in formal dress holding glasses of champagne. It’s a party, obviously, the banner in the background barely visible.

Happy New Year, 1934, it reads.

“She’s flaunting it,” Erika murmurs breathlessly. “Right out here in the open. She’s flaunting it.”

“She hasn’t aged a day,” Ricky breathes, because it’s all coming together.

“In well over 400 years,” says a dry voice from the now open doorway, and they spin, caught. “You’re much cleverer than I’d thought you’d be.”

“You’re stealing their lives,” Erika whispers, because it’s the only thing she can think of that makes sense. “You’re taking their youth.”

The woman smirks. “When I’m not rudely interrupted, yes.”

“Well, the game’s up,” Ricky says fiercely, already stalking her way.

Hannah raises a hand and tilts her head at him and he goes flying back into the wall. Pictures fall to the ground with a loud crash and Erica can see a dent in the drywall where he’s pinned, feet floating a few inches off of the ground. He’s got his hand at his neck, clawing at an invisible force, and she can tell by the purple tint to his skin that he’s being somehow choked to death.

Erika figures there are probably a couple of ways to confront this situation. She chooses the quickest one.

A single bullet to the shoulder catches Hannah off guard and she falters. Ricky collapses to the ground and Erika stalks across the distance separating them, the butt of her handgun catching Hannah in the chin. The witch drops to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.

******

When Hannah wakes up, she’s tied to a chair and Erika and Ricky are arguing.

“Children,” she says sadly, “do you really think this is going to work.”

Erika looks up. She’d been in the middle of a heated contention that there had to be something in the house, some object or talisman, where Hannah collected the lives she’d gathered.

“But what?” Ricky had asked. “Where? And so what if she does? We destroy it and she’ll just start again.”

His plan had been a little more straight forward. One more bullet, this time to the head.

Items in the room begin to rattle almost as soon as Hannah is conscious once again. Erika can see the ropes starting to slowly fray, which means that this is one seriously powerful witch. They clearly don’t have much time, and chances are that they’ll never find the item or talisman, much less figure out how to destroy it, before Hannah breaks loose from her bonds.

Still, killing her in cold blood seems somehow wrong.

“This is the only way,” Ricky says, bring the gun up level with Hannah’s forehead. He’s got his finger on the trigger, about to pull, when Erika sees it.

The star sapphire, nestled in Hannah’s cleavage.

“Wait,” she snaps, grabbing the pendant and ripping it from Hannah’s neck. The witch gives a scream of pure fury, and Erika looks down at the pendant for just a second, watching the light refract off of it in what looks like a thousand points, before throwing it to the ground.

She stomps down hard and is surprised when she feels the stone crack beneath her foot. She stomps again, and then again, and there’s something dripping out of it slowly, something thick and pure white; she thinks about what it might be and nearly vomits.

The witch howls, and things around the room begin to shake more violently. Erika looks up, and Hannah looks 10 years older than she had just seconds before. She glances over at her Dad, sees him watching with a look of amazement, and turns back to see that Hannah looks 20 years older now.

They watch as the witch’s skin begins to sag and wrinkle. Her hair begins to fall out, first a few strands and then in clumps, as her lips draw back and her eyes sink into their sockets. Soon her skin begins to break apart, peeling back from her skull in strips that disintegrate to dust, and her cry dies out.

It all ends seconds later, with bones that collapse into a small pile and then crumble into dust.

Erika looks at it and shivers, and she can’t get the image out of her mind of Hannah hovering over her the night before.

“I hate witches,” she mutters, letting her father draw her into his arms for a tight hug.

She can’t stop shivering.


	9. Chapter 9

Present Day

The business in Big Springs turns out to be a twist on the classic tale of a woman scorned dabbling in witchcraft in order to extract revenge.

“They were all dirty, lying, cheaters,” Josef Hernandez says, tears in his eyes as Avi systematically burns through every one of his hex bags and tucks his spellbook into her bag.

“Maybe, but do you know what witchcraft is, Josef?” Erika asks, looking at him coldly. “It’s a deal with the devil. You’ve traded off part of your soul to a demon. It’s gone.” She makes a noise like the rush of wind. “Never getting that back.”

“And, you’ve killed three men,” Avi adds. “Judging by the looks of these hex bags, you had other plans, too. I saw a powerful love spell, a confusion spell, a spell for wealth and power… You can’t be trusted, Josef.”

His eyes widen, and he begins to struggle furiously against the ropes they’ve used to tie him to a chair.

“You can’t kill me,” he begs. “Please.”

“Why not?” Erika challenges, pulling a hunting knife from her belt. “Killing didn’t seem to bother you before, not when you were the one doing it.”

He looks back and forth between the two of them, seeing sympathy in neither. “Please,” he says again. “I’ll do anything you want.”

“I know you will,” Erika says with a feral smile, advancing with her knife raised.

Josef closes his eyes, cringes, and wets his pants.

The blow doesn’t come. Instead, he feels the tug on the ropes binding one of his hands, and opens an eye cautiously. “Here,” Erika mutters, shoving a notepad and a pen his way. “Write your confession. Say you snuck into each of their houses, pinned them down, and used a funnel and a hose to force the water into their lungs. Do you understand?”

He nods frantically, especially when she punctuates her point by bringing the knife up in front of her again, ostensibly to examine the sharpness of its blade.

“Do you think this will stick?” she asks Avi later, as they put the signed and sealed confession in the mail to the local police.

Avi shrugs. “He can try to deny it, but I think the evidence we planted at his place will pretty much seal the deal. Besides, what’s he going to say? He killed them using witchcraft and only confessed because two witch hunters tracked him down and forced him to write a confession at knifepoint? At the very least, they’ll confine him to the psych ward for a long, long time.”

“It doesn’t feel like enough,” Erika murmurs, eyes focused on the fields passing by outside her window.

“If he doesn’t pay now, he’ll pay later,” Avi says simply. “Three murders? He’s in hock with a demon big time for that, even if he doesn’t know it.”

“A witch nearly killed me once,” she says absently, without thinking. She drops her head against the glass immediately after and digs her nails into her thighs, because she doesn’t ever remember talking this much or this stupidly before.

A minute passes by in silence, and she focuses on the sound of the tires rolling against pavement.

“Are you going to tell me the rest of the story?” Avi asks finally.

“The witch… she, uh, she was stealing youth,” Erika mutters, already knowing she’s going to end up telling Avi things she’d rather keep secret. She started it, after all.

“How?” Avi asks, sounding genuinely curious.

Erika is silent for a moment, then says as flatly as possible, “She was seducing young girls. The youth stealing happened some time after the sex.”

“How? With a spell or with a…”

“I don’t know that part,” Erika interrupts impatiently, then cringes.

“How do you know that was what she was doing, then?”

Erika’s jaw clenches tightly. “I just do.”

She counts off the seconds in her head, making it nearly to five.

“You slept with her?” Avi asks incredulously. 

Erika sighs, shoots Avi an irritated glare, and crosses her arms over her chest. “I didn’t know she was a witch,” she says peevishly

Avi chuckles. “Well, clearly, but how did you figure it out? Did she try to do the spell on you?”

Time has erased most of the embarrassment of the moment, allowing Erika to laugh. “No, my Dad interrupted before she could get to that part.”

It takes Avi a moment to put the pieces together. When she does, she grins.

“So your dad caught you having sex with a witch?”

“I didn’t know she was a witch until after,” Erica feels compelled to reiterate. “Dad found the hex bag under the mattress. She must have slipped it there… sometime.”

Erika is surprised when Avi laughs. “I’m just trying to imagine it,” she says between chuckles. “Your Dad…”

“Was surprisingly cool about the whole thing.”

“So wait,” Avi says, stifling another laugh. Her expression is surprisingly open, almost teasing. “If she was stealing youth, how old was this witch, really?”

“Oh, god,” Erika groans. “I don’t know. Over 400 years old or something. It was horrifying. Not that I’m trying to be ageist or anything – and you’ve got to believe me, she looked really, really good for someone with 4 centuries under her belt – but I still get kind of freaked out thinking about it.”

“That’s…” Avi pauses thoughtfully. “I don’t think I can top that. I can’t even come close.”

Feeling emboldened by the easy flow of the conversation, Erika asks jokingly, “What? No ill-advised encounters in your past?”

“None with a 400 year old witch.” Avi waits a beat, then says slyly, “There was this older woman who took my first kiss in trade for an ill-advised bet.”

“Yeah,” Erika murmurs, “but she was just a bitch, not evil. Anyway, I hear she’s not even all that bad these days, but don’t let her know I told you that. That kind of thing could mess with her street cred.”

Avi looks over at Erika, rolls her eyes, and grins. “She’s secretly sensitive and delicate. I’ll try to remember that.”

******

They don’t stop for a motel room until 3:00 in the morning, which means neither of them gets up before noon.

“I’m getting too old for this,” Erika says around her toothbrush. Avi is sitting by the window, laptop out, barely paying attention to her, so she moves closer, peering over the top of her shoulder. “What’re you doing?”

“Looking for a new job,” Avi replies distractedly.

“I thought you got your info from your Cousin Henri.”

“He passes along things when he finds them, but it’s patchy, at best. Besides, I do things differently now – what with the internet, Lexus-Nexus, Google alerts… I can track all kinds of things.” Her brow furrows, and she looks up at Erika, puzzled. “Why? How did you find out about new jobs?”

“Lucked into them mostly,” Erika says, though the words are nearly unintelligible through a mouthful of toothpaste. “Rumors, talk… that kind of thing. There’s a guy who passes a lot of things my way.”

Avi shakes her head, as if the very thought of doing something so old-fashioned is entirely incomprehensible.

The light over by the window is much brighter than the small lamp had provided the night before, which is why it’s the first time she notices the faded purple shirt Erika is wearing.

“Hey,” she murmurs, turning to face Erika fully, “is that my shirt?”

Erika looks down to see what she’s wearing. The yellow lettering is now all but gone, but the letters it once formed are still visible. ‘LSU Tigers’ it reads, faintly. “Oh yeah,” she says, coloring slightly. “I guess it is.”

“How long have you had that thing?”

Erika’s pretty sure she knows, but she doesn’t want to say. She shrugs her shoulders instead, and turns around to head back into the bathroom.

“I’m surprised it hasn’t fallen apart by now,” Avi calls after her, shaking her head.

The truth is, it’s threadbare in places. The hem is a collection of ragged edges, and there are tiny and not so tiny holes scattered throughout.

Erika spits, rinses, and decides to change the topic. “Find anything?”

“Well, two teenage boys were killed in White Rock, New Mexico.”

At Erika’s impatient gesture to continue, Avi says, “A witness to one of the murders says he saw the murderer.”

When Avi pauses again, Erika sighs. “All right,” she says. “I get it. Enough with the big, dramatic build-up. Is this totally routine or cracker jacks crazy?”

Avi smiles smugly. “According to the witness, Markus Mentor, age 14, was killed by a shiny green man with a pointy head, gold eyes, fangs, and claws for hands.”

“So cracker jacks crazy,” Erika concludes. “What, is this an alien? Are you honestly trying to convince me to go on an alien hunt?”

“White Rock does border Los Alamos.” At Erika’s blank look, she continues. “You know, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Home of outer space research among other things and, more famously, home of the Manhattan Project.”

“Manhattan? Should this have meaning to me?”

“The atomic bomb?”

“And?”

“And the Manhattan Project was the code name given to the project that resulted in the design of the atomic bomb.”

“Why’d they call it the Manhattan Project if it was in New Mexico?”

“Are you… Do you seriously not know any of this?”

At Avi’s look of utter disbelief, Erika’s face splits into a grin. “Of course I do. Do you think I’m an idiot? I watch the History Channel.”

Judging by the way Avi glares at her, she surmises that the other woman is not especially amused. “Okay, fine. We’ve got a possible alien killing people in White Rock. Are you sure the kid who saw it wasn’t just hyped up on sugar and glue?”

“Maybe you’d like to borrow my laptop and see if you can come up with anything better.”

Erika holds her hands up in supplication. “No. I’m sure it’s completely legit. I mean, you got the tip from your fancy search strategy.”

“That’s the way you’re going to play this?”

“What? I’m saying we should go. The computer told you there was a shiny alien with a pointy head committing murder in New Mexico. It sounds right up our alley.”

“Erika…” Avi warns.

“I’m already packing,” Erika says, undeterred. “Should I bring my tinfoil hat?”

Avi just glares.

“No? Too much?”

“Don’t think I won’t shoot you.”

******

They get caught in end of work traffic just outside of Amarillo, Texas. Erika, who had drifted off to sleep somewhere around Lubbock, jerks awake with a start without the soothing rhythm of the road to act as a lullaby.

“You snore,” Avi says immediately.

“No, I don’t,” Erika replies, her words still slurred with sleep. “Where are we?”

“Just outside of Amarillo.”

Erika laces her fingers together and stretches them out in front of her, her entirely body nearly vibrating with the intensity of her stretch. She tilts her head first to the left and then to the right; the pop of bones uncompressing is loud enough to draw a look from the corner of Avi’s eye.

“So, when’s dinner?”

“Is that all you do? Sleep and eat?”

“No, not all.”

The leer on her face makes guessing unnecessary.

Avi sighs, tapping her fingers restlessly on the steering wheel. “I like you better when you’re unconscious.”

Erika rolls her eyes and yawns. “I’m sensing that between the mocking of the alien job of earlier today and my very existence, you’re not especially happy.”

She pauses and waits for a response, ticking off the seconds in her head until she gets to ten.

None comes.

“How about we try engaging in casual conversation then? Smooth some of this tension out,” she prompts.

“Must we?”

“I’ll start.” Erika turns slightly in her seat. Traffic is finally starting to flow a little faster; Avi’s eyes are fastened on the road as the speedometer edges up toward 50 mph. “What’s the deal behind your name?”

“Huh?”

“Well, you’ve got Uncle Etienne, Cousin Henri, Cousin Delphine, Tante Lucienne… all good, French names. But – and correct me if I’m wrong – Avigail doesn’t really fit with the pattern family tradition seems to dictate.”

“No, not so much.”

“So…” Erika prods, “tell me a story.”

Traffic gives up its stranglehold, and the engine roars as Avi accelerates out of a tangle of cars just beginning to space out.

Avi takes in a deep breath, and Erika can see the indecision on her face.

“That’s not the only thing different about my name,” she says slowly, fingers flexing against the wheel. “For at least the last 150 years, all of the children born on my mother’s side of the family have taken Paris as their family name. That’s the real family tradition.”

She falls silent and Erika nearly groans with frustration. “And, so what happened?”

Avi shrugs, eyes fastened on the road in front of her. “When my mother was pregnant with me, before she’d even told anybody other than my dad, she went back home for a visit. The way the story’s told, she’d barely even made it up the steps before Grand-mére Rive smiles, lays her hand on my mother’s abdomen, and says, ‘This is a Daddy’s girl right here.’”

Avi breaks into a smile, shaking her head. The words start to come freely. “She told my mother that I had Paris blood, that was for sure, but I was a Beauvais and I would be named Beauvais. Mother was furious.” She pauses a moment and laughs, picturing the tinge of irritation that still drifts over her mother’s face at any retelling of the story, even after all these years. “But Avigail… I think she just got worn down on that one. Daddy read it in some book somewhere and liked it, but when he found out that it meant ‘father’s joy’, he got it into his head that it was perfect. I guess at that point, Mother decided it didn’t matter anymore. If I was going to be a Beauvais, she might as well let a Beauvais name me.”

“That’s nice,” Erika murmurs sincerely, her smile wistful.

Avi shrugs, slightly embarrassed. “What about you?”

“What? How did I get my name?”

“Yeah. What’s your story?”

This time it’s Erika’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. My Dad wasn’t around when I was born. He didn’t even find out about me until I was 3 months old and my Mom was never really into sharing touching and meaningful stories from when I was a baby,” she says, not able to strip the note of bitterness from her words. “She left when I was 8. I guess I just never got around to asking her before then.”

“I take it you aren’t close.”

Erika shakes her head and chuckles dryly. “You could say that. I haven’t really talked to her in more than 20 years. She moved up to Santa Barbara and started over. New husband, new kids – a second chance on the whole deal.” After a moment, she adds, “I’ve never even met them, her other kids.”

“By choice?”

Erika seems to shake off her melancholy. Her smile snaps back into place and her voice returns to its usual tenor, mostly smug but with a hint of self-deprecation, and Avi chafes at the obvious façade. “No need. I had all the family I needed.”

It’s not a minefield Avi wants to navigate, so she simply nods. “Sounds reasonable,” she says, but the words mean nothing.

******

Dinner in Tucumcari is a rather subdued affair. They’re both road weary. Avi’s glad to be out of the truck; the sudden, constant contact with someone else is jarring after all of the time she’s spent on her own. She thinks that Erika, despite her obviously much more sociable nature, is feeling some of the same, because she only gives their waitress a fairly anemic smile when she brings out their matching cheeseburgers before digging into her food.

Later, when the plates are empty and gone, she asks, “How much further?”

“About three and a half hours.”

“Do you want me to drive for a while?”

Avi doesn’t even realize she looks as affronted as she does until Erika laughs.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

They’re on I-40 for what seems like forever. It’s too dark to really get a feel for the passing scenery other than the fact that Erika sincerely doubts there is any, and, for once, she doesn’t really feel like talking.

“Don’t you have any music?” she asks irritably, having already scanned through the available radio stations.

“Check the glove compartment. Some of my dad’s old tapes might be in there.”

Erika tries the cab light, but it doesn’t work. One more thing to fix, she thinks, as she feels her way to the glove compartment’s latch. Her fingers sift through the contents – a ruffle of paper, the cold edge of what she knows, instinctively, is a gun, and then finally, the hard plastic edge of a cassette tape. It takes her two tries to get it into the cassette deck, and it’s been so long since she’s used one that the mechanical noise of the tape queuing makes her smile.

The sounds that crackle through the truck’s speakers are old, with the occasional pop, faint scratch, and tinny feel of music recorded in the days before fancy studios. She doesn’t hear much at first, just a guitar in the background providing a bare bones rhythm.

“What is this?” she asks as a man starts singing. His voice is slightly nasally, with the slight lisp of someone who has probably lost at least a few teeth. The words are in a language she doesn’t understand, though if forced to hazard a guess, she’d say French.

“Blind Uncle Gaspard, I think.”

“You even have relatives that record you travel music?” Erika asks, incredulous.

Avi chuckles and shakes her head, the movement barely visible in the almost complete darkness. “That’s his name. He’s no relation.”

“Oh.” She can almost feel Erika thinking in the pause. “What kind of music is this?”

“Cajun music. Old, old Cajun music.”

“It’s actually really depressing.”

“Yeah, it is. Just imagine how much worse it would be if you understood what he’s saying.”

They listen in silence for a moment before Erika asks, “Do you understand what he’s saying?”

Avi nods, the gesture again lost in the darkness. “It’s a song about loss and death. A handsome young sailor dies.”

“Well, that clearly would have been my guess,” Erika mutters. Her tone shifts, becoming curious as she asks, “So you speak French?”

“Well, this is Cajun French, so it’s a little different. I’m actually better with French Creole, but there are a lot of similarities.” Avi’s not sure what prompts her to add, “I don’t ever get to use it anymore. I’ve probably forgotten half of what I knew.”

“You won’t get any help from me. I speak a little Spanish, and that’s it.”

It’s odd, Avi thinks, drifting away from the conversation. It has been ten years since her father was killed and probably even longer than that since she last heard this song, but the simple strum of a guitar and the melancholy warbling of a long dead singer is all it takes to make it feel like he’s there, smiling over at her from the driver’s side as she crosses her arms over her chest, petulant. “Daddy, do we have to listen to this?”

Every time, the scene played out the same. He’d reach over, turn up the volume slightly, and reply softly, “Our history makes us who we are, baby girl.”

******

Midnight finds them in White Rock, checking into a motel with a nautical theme that Avi has chosen partly because they’ve just been listening, on repeat, to a song about a dead sailor but mainly because she appreciates the perversity of owning and operating a nautically-themed motel in the middle of New Mexico.

Morning finds them in matching black pantsuits with identical white button down shirts.

“So when they ask what division of the FBI we’re from, do we tell them the X-Files?” Erika asks, straightening the collar of her blazer.

Because she’s fairly sure it will seriously undermine their cover if she knocks Erika unconscious just outside the entryway to the morgue, Avi chooses to ignore her.

The morgue attendant doesn’t seem interested in more than a quick flash of their identification. The medical examiner takes a bit of a closer look, but after a few seconds of scrutiny, waves them over to the body.

“The cause of death was pretty obvious,” she says, pulling down the sheet. Erika has to hold back a smirk when Avi blinks rapidly before taking in what is clearly a reinforcing breath. “You’ve got multiple contusions and broken bones and there’s some head trauma, but it was this blow that killed him.”

She points to a set of four deep gashes running at a shallow angle from the back of the boy’s skull and across his neck, ending halfway down his chest. “This one,” she continues, pointing at the third of the four gashes, “severed the jugular. He bled out.”

Erika nods. “What could have caused this?”

“I don’t know. I’m tempted to say he was mauled by a wild animal, but we didn’t recover any animal hairs at the site or from his clothing. Anyway, it seems highly improbable that he would have been attacked by an animal. The murder occurred near his school, and there haven’t been any reports of wild animals in that area. Whatever did this was big. Someone would have seen it.”

“What about the other victim?”

The medical examiner shifts her gaze to Avi. “He had the same pattern of injuries. It’s definitely the strangest thing I’ve seen during my tenure here.”

“Do you mind if we…” Erika trails off, gesturing to the body.

“No. Take all of the time you want. My attendant can show you out when you’re finished.”

Avi waits for the medical examiner to move out of hearing range before murmuring, “So what do you think it is? A spirit?”

“Maybe, but what spirit?”

“I don’t know. This area was once home to several Native American tribes – the Kokopelli, the Tewa.”

“How do you even know that?”

Avi stifles a frustrated noise. “The internet. Can we focus?”

“I’m focused. You think someone’s disturbed the local Indian spirits and now there’s a shiny, green, pointy-headed Shaman on the warpath.”

“You know what, I hope it is an alien,” Avi says hotly. “If I’m lucky, it’ll abduct you.”

“I know you don’t really mean that.”

“I’m pretty sure I do.”

Erika sighs, and checks her watch. “This senseless bickering is actually kind of counterproductive. Why don’t we go talk to the investigating detective?”

Avi wants to argue the point on principle alone but finds she can’t.

******

The investigating detective is none too pleased to see them.

“I didn’t request help from the Feds.”

“We realize this,” Erika says smoothly, “but we think your murders might fit into a larger case we’ve been working. We’re not here to try to take over. We just want to talk to a few people. This is absolutely your case. We have no intention of interfering.”

“I don’t really see how you can ask questions and not interfere at the same time.”

Erika smiles, unfazed, and leans forward. Her voice is low, conspiratorial. “To be honest, the connection we’re working here is pretty tenuous. It’s just, our investigation has stalled and our boss is looking for results – you know how that is – so we’re casting a pretty wide net. Chances are we’ll ask a few questions, find out there’s no connection at all, and be out of your hair. Best case scenario, we’re a new set of eyes on your case, and any information we might happen to turn up comes directly to you. We don’t have any interest in getting involved with a local case. We know you’ve got that covered.”

He continues to look dubious, but lets them make copies of the files nonetheless.

“Were you flirting with him?” Avi asks later, once they’re back in the truck.

“Flirting? No.”

“I saw the definite application of feminine wiles.”

“No, you saw me appealing to his innate cowboy fantasy of helping damsels in distress.”

“He didn’t seem very helpful.”

Erika shrugs. “Well, it’s tempered by his latent misogyny. He’s a conflicted soul.”

“Are you mocking him or me?”

“Him. Mostly.” Erika slowly closes the file she’s been perusing and lowers it to her lap. “Look, if there’s one thing I do pretty well, it’s reading marks, and that detective, he’s not a bad guy. He’s relatively progressive. He’s not going to say that women have no place in law enforcement. He’s just going to think they’re mostly incompetent. So I let him think we are, a little, reassured him that he’s not going to be upstaged by us, and simpered just enough for him to feel good about being the magnanimous good guy. I wasn’t really interested in teaching the guy a lesson in gender politics. I just wanted him to do what we wanted him to do, and he did.”

She can practically see Avi bristling. “Why do you care?”

“I don’t.” Avi’s frame is rigid with tension. “Just don’t do that to me, okay? Don’t think you can manipulate me.”

Erika’s not sure it’s a promise she can definitely keep, but she nods anyway. “Yeah, okay. Sure.”

“I mean it.”

“Okay,” Erika says again, a little more emphatically this time. “Now, if you have a spare second to put your paranoia aside, we have an alien to wrangle.”

******

Avi realizes halfway through their next interrogation that it probably hasn’t helped that she’s tense and on edge from her earlier conversation with Erika, so she consciously relaxes and offers the clearly quite nervous principal a reassuring smile. Not that it probably mattered, she thinks wryly, as Erika has already managed to coax her into speaking freely.

“So they were friends,” Erika notes once they’re back in the truck. “Close friends.”

“Bullies,” Avi amends. “They had already gotten into trouble twice this year for picking on some of the smaller kids.”

“The incident report,” Erika continues, pulling free the sheet the school had used to document the two reported cases of bullying, “lists two other names. They weren’t the only ones involved.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they picked on the wrong kid. Maybe one of the other two decided they wanted to eliminate the competition.”

“This isn’t the mob. They’re middle schoolers.”

“And maybe this isn’t supernatural at all. Maybe you’ve just got a kid who’s played too much GTA and wants to take his adventures into the real world. Maybe you’ve got an adult who’s murdering kids. Or, maybe it really is a bear.”

“Or, maybe I should be working this job by myself,” Avi replies hotly, turning to glare at Erika. “You haven’t exactly been helpful.”

Erika thinks this is largely because she never would have taken this job in the first place, much less taken it so seriously, but it’s pretty clear that saying either of those things won’t really help. She figures that maybe this comes with the way Avi hunts, through patterns and intuition instead of rumors and tips. There have got to be some dead ends along the way, jobs that look promising but end up fizzling out. It’s true that she’s pretty much mocked her way through this one, so maybe she should pull back. After all, she’s bound to go a little crazy one day and insist they go off on what looks like a wild goose chase, and when that happens, having a bank of good will from which to draw will help.

“Fair enough,” she says evenly, turning down the power on her most winning smile, conscious of the way Avi is watching her closely. “Why don’t we go talk to the other kids? The ones who haven’t been mauled by a…” She draws short and waves her hand about abstractly in lieu of saying something that might offend Avi further. “And later, maybe we can trace down this witness.”

The first visit sees them faced with a sullen and angry boy. He sits on his couch, arms crossed over his chest and shoulders hunched, glaring at them over the dark wood of a Mission style coffee table. His mother stands behind him, understatedly elegant, with an air of impatience that makes her seem more hard to please than harried.

“Troy,” she says crisply. “Posture.”

The boy’s face darkens, but he straightens his shoulders.

“I’m not sure how we can help you, agents,” she says smoothly, absently running one hand along the back of the couch. “Troy certainly didn’t have anything to do with those ghastly murders.”

Erika smiles faintly. “Of course he didn’t, Ms. Stone.”

“Doctor,” the woman corrects absently, immediately.

“But you were friends with Markus and Jared, weren’t you?” Erika asks, directing the question to Troy.

He nods slowly, his lips compressing into a grim line.

Avi’s voice is surprisingly gentle when she says, “This must be pretty hard on you, losing your friends.”

The boy’s bottom lip begins to tremble as he gives another weak nod.

“Honestly, agents,” his mother breaks in, “he’s already been through this with the police. Couldn’t you just get the files from them?”

“Troy’s been having some problems at school,” Erika says by way of reply, her voice going steely as she looks up at his mother.

“Minor incidents.”

“Serious enough to get him placed in detention.”

“I don’t quite understand what you’re implying.”

“Markus and Jared were involved in those incidents as well.”

“I wasn’t aware the FBI was interested in minor conflicts between schoolchildren.”

“Is there somewhere special you would go?” Avi asks Troy, shooting a warning look at Erika. “Some place you went to hang out with your friends?”

Troy shrugs. “Not really. Markus’ house, mostly.”

“Had they said anything about anyone threatening them lately? About someone following them, or about strange things happening?”

“No. I mean, nothing weird.”

“Have you noticed anything strange? Have you seen anything… unusual?”

Troy seems to freeze for a moment, before shaking his head in the negative.

“It could be important.” Avi smiles encouragingly. “Even if it seems really strange, you can tell us.”

“There was this one thing,” Troy says uneasily, glancing up at his mom and then back at them. “But, it’s pretty crazy.”

“We’re pretty good with crazy,” Erika says, offering an encouraging smile of her own. “Try us.”

“I’m not even sure if I saw it. It was… it was green. Big. It had gold eyes.”

Behind him, the expression on the face of Troy’s mother hardens. “That’s enough,” she says, cutting him short.

“Where did you see it?” Avi asks urgently.

“Outside of the school.”

“That’s enough,” Troy’s mother says again, her voice hard. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t encourage him. Now, if you don’t have any more questions…”

“Thank you,” Erika says smoothly, standing. “We appreciate you taking the time to meet with us.”

She waits until they’re back in the truck before sighing.

“Okay, fine,” she says grudgingly, trying to ignore Avi’s self-satisfied smirk. “Maybe your alien does exist after all.”

“That’s two sightings in different places, one in daylight.”

Erika rubs at her temple, as if fighting back a headache. “Spirits are tied to the place where they died. They don’t usually jump around.”

“Some can move.”

“Yeah, but there’s not a lot of lore on it. There’s the story of the woman in white, but this is pretty clearly not that.”

“So maybe we’re not dealing with a spirit,” Avi says hesitantly, as if trying to work through their limited options. “Maybe this is…”

She trails off, perplexed.

Erika shrugs helplessly. “Maybe we should go talk to that other kid.”

******

The last of the gang of four bullies doesn’t offer them much else. He hasn’t seen anything green and he’s not particularly interested in talking.

“What a little snot,” Erika mutters as they leave. Avi can’t help but agree.

They track down the witness to the other murder, and Erika’s frankly surprised that he wasn’t immediately arrested for being a flaming pot head the moment the police took his statement.

“It was, like, crazy,” he says, drawing the last word out for a full three seconds. “I mean, wah.” He makes some kind of motion with his hands, bringing them up above his head and then arching them into one another, as if he’s trying to imitate a wave.

“So this green guy,” Erika asks, not particularly concerned with holding onto the edge of professionalism she’s been trying to sport all day, “could you see through him? Was he solid?”

The guy scratches at his scraggly goatee contemplatively. “Kind of wavy,” he finally decides. “Like one of those illusions where you think there’s water but when you get there, there’s no water? Like that. Real bummer. Only then he was like fucking hardcore, man. Shiny metal suit and real as a motherfucker. I don’t know… maybe I imagined that first part, you know?”

“The part where he was wavy?” Avi asks delicately.

“Yeah. I mean, that’d be crazy, right? Some wavy dude?”

“It could have been a trick of the light,” Erika says, straight-faced.

“Probably,” the guy agrees, nodding seriously. Then, “Oh, hey, I drew a picture of the dude, if you want it. I tried to give it to the police, but they didn’t seem interested. I don’t think they’re taking this whole thing seriously, you know. But it’s like, that was a kid, man. Just some little kid, and that fucking thing just…”

He trails off, clearly on the verge of tears, and Erika sends Avi a look that lets her know that if he starts crying, she’s not offering her shoulder.

“Maybe you could get us the drawing,” Avi prompts gently.

“Oh yeah. Right.”

He toddles off down the hallway, leaving them alone for a minute, and Erika takes a moment to admire his immaculately crafted bong. “He certainly seems reliable,” she says, voice low.

The picture, when he returns, turns out to be a stick-figure drawing of a creature with a triangle for a head, gold slashes for eyes, and five long, sharp claws on each hand.

“It’s not exactly to scale,” he says, holding it out for examination. “You know, the chest was, like, maybe a little wider.”

“I think we get the picture,” Erika says smoothly. “You don’t mind if we take this?”

“Nah, man. Keep it. It’s not like I could forget that thing, anyway. It was for real scary, you know. Like, vicious.” He shivers, then looks at them with concern. “You’ll catch it, right?”

Erika hopes her smile is appropriately reassuring. “We’ll certainly try.”

******

When they get back to the motel room, Erika uses a push pin to affix the picture to the wall.

“Our prime suspect.”

Avi rolls her eyes and pulls the tail of her shirt out of her pants.

“I think I’ll call him Voltrex, Destroyer of Universes,” Erika continues thoughtfully, undoing her shirt buttons. “Unless… you don’t think it’s a girl, do you? Voltrexa maybe?”

When she turns, Avi is pulling on a pair of jeans. She’s taken off her shirt as well; there’s a tee shirt laid out on the bed but she hasn’t put it on yet, and Erika feels her mouth go dry.

“No, probably Voltrex,” she says with a slight hitch, turning back to the picture before Avi can catch her staring.

“I want to do some research. Do you mind picking up dinner?” Avi asks, not bothering to respond to Erika’s question.

“Are you going to let me drive the truck?”

“There’s a diner down the street.” Avi smiles smugly. “You can walk, right?”

“Whatever,” Erika says softly, feeling distinctly slighted. “I wanted to go for a run anyway.”

“It gets cold out here at night, you know.”

Erika can’t help the way her eyes run down the length of Avi’s body as she mutters, “I know.”

******

She instinctively follows the route they took earlier, winding her way back through the various steps they’d taken that day. She passes by the school, dark and empty now, and in front of the police station, still aglow. The air is so cold it burns her lungs, and even under the thick cotton of her sweats, her skin is dry. She clenches her hands into fists when her fingers start to go numb, but it doesn’t help – neither does a vigorous rubbing of her nose.

To the end of the block, she challenges herself, wiggling her toes in her shoes. Make it to the end of the block and then we can go home.

The end of the block comes with a cramp in her side, and she slows. She brings her hand up to massage it out, cursing herself for letting her confusion with and anger at Avi push her to go too far, when she sees a figure in black heading her way.

Another jogger, she realizes, feeling some amount of relief that she’s not the only person misguided enough to be out in the freezing cold.

She’s breathing hard, her breath snaking upward in icy trails, trying not to think about the fact that she’s going to have to turn around and run all the way back to the motel sometime, when things get fucking weird.

The thing kind of shimmers into being. It’s tall, clearly over six feet, and a shiny, metallic green that looks better suited to an underground street racer than a supernatural creature. Its head swoops up to a point in the back, and its face is positively heinous. It’s got sharp canines, ridged cheekbones that protrude like knives, the body of a 20 year old gym rat interested primarily in definition, and ears that would put Spock to shame. Worst of all, it’s got glowing gold eyes that shine like a reflectionless pool of fiery light.

“Watch out!” she screams, ignoring the cramp in her side and the way her feet have already turned to blocks of ice. She sprints across the road, one hand already behind her, pulling out the knife she has sheathed there – pure iron. It’s maybe not the best thing to do, because the jogger had been jogging before, but now she’s immobilized with fear, trapped between a grasshopper on steroids and a woman running straight at her, knife at the ready.

The thing has its arm raised, and Erika can see the claws. They’re sharp and deadly, curved slightly as the creature poises to strike, and Erika doesn’t think. She just lowers her shoulder and plows straight into the woman, sending them crashing into the shrubbery lining the sidewalk. It takes her a second to untangle herself; the side of her face stings, probably from its abrupt introduction to the spindly yet sharp plant life, but she can’t really focus on that. Instead, she scrambles to her feet, knife at the ready.

The creature towers over her, easily topping her by at least a foot. Its mouth is opened in a perpetual grin, almost as if it’s been molded that way, which honestly only serves to make it look even more frightening. She has no clue what to do. She’s got her gun with her, secured in its shoulder holster under her jacket, but she’s not sure it would help. Now that she can see it up close, this thing, whatever it is, is clearly covered with a shiny exoskeleton.

It brings its hand up again. Light from the street lamp glints off of the edge of one razor-sharp claw and Erika grimaces even as she lunges forward, plunging her knife right where she imagines the creature’s heart would be if it had one. She feels the sting of metal slicing open her skin, twin blows as the creature reacts. The sound it makes is harsh, like the aggravated hiss of a snake, and although its facial features can’t move, she swears it looks surprised.

It disappears with a flicker.

“Come on,” Erika says, reaching out her hand and pulling the other woman to her feet. The thing’s not gone, she’s sure of it, and she doesn’t want to be around when it pops back into existence.

The figure on the ground wobbles onto her feet, and Erika finds herself face-to-face with Dr. Stone.

“We’ve got to go,” she says, pushing down her surprise.

“My house,” Dr. Stone says, her voice thin and reedy. “It’s just over there.”

It isn’t until she takes her first step that she feels the pain.

“Fuck,” Erika hisses, looking down to see shredded sweatpants. There are four neat slashes through the fabric. Blood dots the material, and she can feel it, now, trickling down her leg.

She makes it across the street in as graceful of a run-hop as she can manage.

It’s warm inside, thankfully, but that just means the feeling is returning to her limbs. She feels each bruise and cut more acutely as her skin starts to lose the tingle of numbness. There’s the long cut on the back of her hand, and she vaguely remembers the creature wrapping its claws around her as she plunged her knife into it, one of them slicing cleanly through her skin. She’s not sure how she got the others – a defensive swipe of the creature’s claws, maybe – but they’re starting to burn.

“Do you have band-aids?”

Where the doctor had been cool and collected earlier that afternoon, now she’s trembling. Her eyes are wide with shock, and Erika worries briefly that she’s going to faint.

“What was that?” she asks, her voice at half strength.

“It was…” Erika shrugs. “I don’t know, but whatever it was, it was real.”

Avi, she thinks, will never let her live it down.

“It was… it was green. It was a monster.”

Erika’s pretty sure there’s no disputing either of those facts.

“It was, but it’s gone for now.”

This catches Dr. Stone’s attention. She pins her gaze on Erika, some of the steel of the afternoon back in place. “For now?”

If she wasn’t in pain, Erika would sugarcoat what she says next. “It was targeting you for some reason. It didn’t get you, so it’ll be back.”

“Troy,” Dr. Stone gasps. “I have to check on Troy.”

She’s off, racing up the stairs, leaving Erika to limp up after her.

“Mom,” she hears, and relaxes slightly, because the only emotion she hears in Troy’s voice is irritation, not fear.

She decides it’s not totally irresponsible of her to leave them alone. They’ll scream if they need her, and the blood now seeping slowly from the cuts on her thigh is starting to itch.

Dr. Stone finds her in the kitchen with her pants around her knees. She’s wet a kitchen towel and is cleaning the blood from around her wounds, which she realizes is probably a little bit forward.

“Uh, sorry,” she says sheepishly, offering a chagrined smile.

“You’re hurt.”

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

Dr. Stone has recovered most of her composure. Erika can’t help but be impressed, because most civilians would still be screaming.

“Sit,” she says sternly, pulling over a chair from the kitchen table.

Erika tells herself that it’s only exhaustion and blood loss that prompts her to obey as quickly as she does.

Dr. Stone is pulling a pair of latex gloves from under the counter and snapping them on with proficiency, which Erika tries to convince herself isn’t nearly as sexy as it looks, when she says, “Thank you for saving me.”

It’s absolutely embarrassing, the blush that creeps up her cheeks. “It was nothing,” Erika murmurs.

“No. It was most definitely something,” Dr. Stone says, her features softening into something much more approachable than they had been earlier in the day. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

She’s starting to get a little self-conscious by the time Dr. Stone returns. After all, it’s a bit awkward to be sitting in the woman’s kitchen with her pants around her ankles. She’s put the wet towel beneath her thigh in an attempt to soak up any blood that might otherwise drip onto the furniture, and is dabbing gently at the cut on the back of her hand with the tail of her shirt when the other woman returns.

“Stop that,” Dr. Stone scolds gently, and Erika does.

“So you’re a doctor doctor,” Erika says, then cringes at the inanity of what she’s just said.

The look Dr. Stone shoots up at her is dryly amused. “Yes. A doctor doctor. I do medical research at the National Laboratory, but I think I can remember enough of my clinical training to successfully apply a band-aid.”

She’s cleaning the wounds gently as she says this, but there’s little she can do to minimize the sting of the alcohol pad she’s using. Erika can’t help the flinch she gives each time the cloth brushes over the edges of her skin, but she tries to keep her wiggling to a minimum.

“My name,” the doctor continues, “is Su-shin, but you can call me Su.”

Erika smiles tightly, teeth clenched as she struggles to keep from making any noise.

“So, Ms. FBI agent, are you going to tell me how you happened to be on hand to save me?”

“By accident,” Erika says tightly. “I’d like to say I anticipated danger and was prepared, but the truth is, I was out for a jog.”

“The only reason I seem so calm right now,” Su says, and her voice is indeed calm, “is because you don’t seem overly fazed by our encounter with that… thing.”

She smears something cold and thick against the four long, shallow cuts, and Erika stifles a noise of surprise.

“It’s a tenuous hold,” Su continues. She’s covered the cuts with gauze and is wrapping a bandage around them, and Erika finds the pressure oddly comforting. “If you freak, I freak. I’m just warning you.”

“Understood,” Erika says breathlessly, cringing slightly when Su shifts her attention to the cut on the back of her hand. “I feel like there’s something I should tell you,” she continues cautiously. “I’m not really with the FBI.”

Su’s grip tightens at the words.

“I, uh… I do a different kind of work. It’s similar. I mean, I do hunt monsters, only they’re not of the metaphorical type, if that makes sense.”

Su’s jaw clenches, so Erika feels compelled to press on. “I hunt actual monsters, like the thing that attacked you.”

“If I hadn’t seen what I’ve just seen, I would probably call the authorities right about now.”

“They won’t be able to help you with this.”

The look that flits across Su’s face is almost vicious. “I’m well aware. I’ve met them, you recall.” She pauses for a moment, looking at Erika’s still bleeding hand with clinical detachment. “This could use stitches, but I’m afraid I don’t have the right kind of equipment here. We may have to take you to the emergency room.”

“Avi can do it,” Erika replies offhandedly, before stiffening. “Oh, shit. Avi.”

“I’m sorry?”

“My phone.” She winces, thinking about just how angry Avi is probably going to be once she learns Erika’s broken cover. “It’s in the pocket of my sweatpants. I need to call my partner.”

She’s surprised when Su digs into her pocket instead of passing the now torn and bloodied item of clothing over for her to do it.

“I know this probably has little actual meaning,” Su says, holding the phone just out of her reach, “but I’d like for you to promise me that you’re not some kind of insane, psychopathic killer who has set this up as an elaborate ruse in order to lower my defenses before killing me.”

“I promise,” Erika says immediately. “I’m not that smart or that creative.”

It appears to be enough.

“Where the hell are you?” Avi says as soon as she picks up the phone. “I’m starving.”

“Long story,” Erika says, watching Su out of the corner of her eye. She’s moved on to the scratches on Erika’s face, which kind of sucks all over, because she’s just gotten rid of the black eye. “I need you to meet me at Dr. Stone’s house. Bring the med kit. I need stitches.”

There’s a long pause. She’s expecting an explosion, but all she gets is an eerily calm, “I’ll be right there.”

“These are just superficial,” Su says as soon as she slides her phone shut. “They should heal just fine.”

“Thank god for that. There are only so many scars a girl can have before it moves from sexy to scary.”

There’s something about the way Su looks at her, with a hint of amusement mixed with appraisal, that sends her pulse sky rocketing. “I don’t think you’re quite there yet. At scary, I mean.”

Erika feels a sly grin slide across her face. “Oh yeah?”

Su matches it, before rising to her feet and taking a step back. “We should get you some pants.”

“There’s no need to hurry.”

“I’ll admit you have a certain roguish appeal,” Su says dryly, “but I feel a little odd about the fact that you’re clearly trying to flirt with me while pantsless and bloody in my kitchen. This is completely separate, of course, from the panic I’m trying to suppress about the giant green monster that tried to kill me approximately half an hour ago.”

It’s half-hearted. She’s tired, in pain, and not quite up to her usual lecherous standard since she started travelling with Avi, but Erika would be ashamed of herself if she didn’t at least make the effort. “I can put my pants back on if that’ll help, but it really seems kind of counterintuitive.”

“Won’t your partner be here soon?”

“We have at least 10 minutes.”

Su smiles at her, starting to repack her first aid kit. “How about I make tea instead?”

“If you insist.”

“As appealing as your offer of 10 minutes in heaven may be, I do. It helps me pretend that you have some sort of credibility.”

She thinks about offering a defense of her skills or a short synopsis of her resume, but she doesn’t have the energy. “Maybe you could put a shot or two of whiskey in mine,” she suggests instead, watching as Su fills a kettle with water and turns on the burner.

“That doesn’t really inspire confidence.”

“Maybe,” Erika shrugs, “but I’m about to get stitches without anesthetic.”

Su pulls a bottle down from a cabinet and offers it to her wordlessly.

******

She can tell Avi’s concerned, but it’s covered up with layers of angry.

“What happened to you?” is the first thing she says.

Erika shrugs, gingerly flexing the fingers of her injured hand. “Voltrex.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Big. Shiny. Green. Gold eyes.”

Avi cuts a concerned glance in Su’s direction.

“It attacked her.”

“She tells me you hunt monsters,” Su interjects, and Erika winces, because she was really hoping they’d somehow be able to make it through to the end of this job without Avi finding out about that.

“Was that before or after she drank half a bottle of whiskey?”

“Before.”

“And I’ve only had this much,” Erika says, holding her fingers about an inch and a half apart. “Make them tiny,” she adds, holding out her hand. Blood has seeped through the gauze covering it, which for some reason makes her feel even more woozy. “I don’t want it to scar too badly.”

“Why don’t you have on any pants?”

In response, Erika tilts up on the hip opposite her injured thigh. “I had a run in with the thing.”

“So it was corporeal?”

Erika searches for a way to describe what she’d seen. “Kind of. It was like a spirit, but not like a spirit, if that makes sense.”

Avi is about to reply that it makes very little sense indeed when the piercing whistle of the kettle cuts through her words.

“It seemed solid,” Erika continues once the noise has abated, “but I put my knife through it easier than I would flesh. It seemed more surprised than anything else. I don’t think it responds to iron like a spirit.”

Iron, as every hunter knows, is an anathema to most supernatural beings. One swipe from an iron rod dissipates a spirit at least long enough to regroup.

“You’re taking this exceedingly well,” Avi notes, as Su places a cup of tea in front of each of them.

“I’m pretty sure it’s shock,” Su replies succinctly.

Avi’s proficient with a needle, but it’s still disconcerting to see her holding one poised just above her skin. It’s wicked looking, curved and sharp; it hurts just looking at it.

“Wait,” Erika says, grabbing the bottle and taking a long swig, wiping the back of her uninjured hand across her lips after she returns the bottle to the table with a clumsy thunk. Her eyes are watering and the liquor is burning down her throat when Avi slides the needle into her skin for the first time.

“It’ll be over soon,” Avi says soothingly, not needing to look up to know the way Erika’s eyes have widened and her skin has gone clammy.

She’s working quickly, with all of the skill of a trained surgeon, and Erika knows that she’ll appreciate the efficiency and speed later. Right now, all she can do is clench her uninjured hand into a fist and try to concentrate on any of the other myriad injuries she has. Even with all of that intense concentration focused at anything that’s not her hand, she still can’t hold back a whimper of pain each time the needle pushes through her skin.

“There,” Avi says after another minute, but Erika waits until she hears the last snip of surgical string before she looks down.

“Oh god,” she moans. Her hand looks awful, like the stitching on a poorly made doll as repaired by an inept toddler. She knows it’s good work, but that does nothing to soften the sight of it, with each little bundle of surgical string jutting up from the back her hand erratically.

“Ibuprofen?” Su offers hesitantly, and it’s clear from the tone of her voice that the events of the night are finally starting to register with her.

Erika’s answer is a tense nod. Her jaw is clamped shut; she’s afraid if she opens it, she’ll vomit.

She’s washing down pills with whiskey when Avi focuses her attention on Su. “We need to talk.”

Su nods wordlessly. She’s staring at Erika’s newly stitched stitches, and the longer she looks, the paler she gets.

“I’m pretty sure that whatever it was that was keeping me from having some sort of massive meltdown is starting to wear off,” she says distantly as she slumps down into a chair. “Pass me the whiskey. I could use a sedative.”

Avi catches the bottle before it can exchange hands. “You’re welcome to get tanked later. First, we need to figure out why this creature targeted you.”

“Presumably because it wanted to kill me.”

“If so, it wanted to kill you for a reason. You don’t happen to know what that reason might be, do you?”

Su’s hand shakes as she brings her cup of tea to her lips. It’s a fine tremor, barely visible, but enough for Avi to know that she’s going to have to make sure that this debrief happens quickly.

“No,” Su replies sharply, lowering her cup to the table slowly, “I don’t happen to know.”

“Think harder,” Erika prompts. Her voice is a little slurred and her eyelids are starting to droop. She looks both woozy and nauseated, but she seems to be at least reasonably coherent, so Avi lets her take over. “There’s got to be someone. I mean, your kid’s terrorizing half the neighborhood and you could stand to be a little more apologetic about it, honestly.”

“Troy’s been having a hard time since his father left,” Su says defensively, eyes flashing with anger. “He’ll settle down.”

Avi’s unwilling to let this conversation devolve into a fractious debate about divorced parent guilt and its attendant effects on child-rearing, so she snaps her fingers, drawing everyone’s attention to her immediately.

“I need you to focus,” she says for the benefit of both of them before turning her attention to Su once more. “Do you have any enemies? Anyone with whom you’ve fought or argued, or anyone you’ve offended? Anyone who has any reason to be angry with you right now?”

“No, of course not,” Su replies sharply. “Why would anyone…”

She pauses midsentence, eyes narrowing.

“What?” Avi prompts.

“It couldn’t be…”

Erika leans forward, wincing when she accidentally puts pressure on her hand. “Tell us.”

“Well, the Skuttys – Ajay and Shama. They had threatened to go to the School Board about Troy. He’d been,” she pauses, frowning around the word as if it’s bitter in her mouth, “bullying their son Champ.”

“And?”

“And I met with them, the principal, and the school counselor. I agreed to a week of after school detention for Troy, and I promised to take him to see a therapist.”

“Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Taken him to see a therapist?”

Su shrugs. “This only happened a few weeks ago, and things have been so hectic since, especially with the deaths.” At Avi’s slightly disapproving frown, she adds defensively, “It’s on my to-do list.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Troy served his detention, and he assures me that he’s behaving better.”

Avi’s eyes meet Erika’s.

“We should pay them a visit.”

“Now?” Erika asks, blinking rapidly and straightening her shoulders as if trying to will herself back into awareness.

“What about me?” Su asks sharply. “That thing could come after me again.”

Because one of them is terrified and the other is half-drunk and in a lot of pain, Avi allows them this moment of logic fail.

“We’ll go talk to the Skuttys in the morning,” she says calmly. “If it’ll make you more comfortable, we’ll bunk here tonight. You won’t be safe until we find out what this thing is and kill it.”

“I’ve got a guest room,” Su offers immediately. Then, with a hint of tremor in her voice, she adds, “Should Troy and I leave? Should we go somewhere else until this is all over?”

Despite her temptation to say yes, Avi instead shrugs. “I don’t know. Most spirits can’t leave the place where they were killed, but this doesn’t seem to fit the pattern of a spirit. I don’t know what we’re dealing with, I don’t know how mobile it is, and I don’t know if it’s capable of tracking you down no matter where you are. My gut says that it’s not, that you need to be in close proximity to it for it to do you harm, but I can’t say that for certain. If you’re here, at least Erika and I can keep an eye on you.”

“That’s not especially comforting.”

“Yeah, well,” Avi grunts, “comforting’s not my job.”

******

Erika takes the guest bed and Avi takes the couch. With the help of a few more pills and another two fingers of whiskey, she falls into a deep, dreamless sleep, but doesn’t feel any more refreshed for it in the morning. She showers carefully, cringing at the sting of hot water and soap against tender skin, scrapes, and bruises, and is glad that her hair is pretty low maintenance, because her hand is sore and sensitive to even the slightest movement.

She’s pulling a brush through her hair with her uninjured hand when the fog on the mirror clears well enough for her to see herself, and it’s the first time she’s taken a look since before the attack the night before.

“Christ,” she hisses, looking at the tiny scratches webbing across the right side of her face. There are a few on her cheek and a larger one running diagonally across her temple. One traces down the contour of her jaw, and with the yellowing hint of a bruise still circling under her eye, she looks positively awful.

It puts her in a foul mood, not helped by the fact that Avi’s so fucking competent.

“Did you have these in the truck?” she asks, looking down at the suit that comprises her FBI guise. She could almost swear the shirt’s been laundered and pressed, but it’s impossible. And this is all before she even spies her bag, sitting open on the floor. “Did you bring everything?”

“I left the sketch of Voltrex.”

“You took the time to pack before you came over? It didn’t seem like an emergency situation to you?”

“You said you needed stitches, which doesn’t exactly constitute an emergency. Anyway, if we were going to have to hightail it out of here, I didn’t want to leave behind a motel room full of evidence, including falsified documents containing our aliases. For all I knew, you’d taken it upon yourself to revisit Dr. Stone and employ persuasive techniques of the physical variety, and I’m not about to end up with my picture in the system because you fucked up.”

“I didn’t fuck up,” Erika says angrily, offended. “I’m not stupid.”

Avi’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “You broke cover.”

“And gained Su’s cooperation and more information than we’d ever have gotten otherwise. Besides, she’d seen the thing. It was a calculated risk.”

“That’s right. You’re a gambler.”

Erika’s not even sure why Avi’s being so cold and critical, or why she’s feeding into it.

“Are we going to go see these Skutty people or not?” she asks harshly, unwilling to push the argument further.

“Do you think you can cover up some of the damage?” Avi replies, eyes cutting up to Erika’s face. “You look like you went five rounds with a rabid alley cat.”

Getting dressed is like torture. She can only use one hand, which means it takes twice as long to button buttons and to zip zippers. The scratches on her leg have scabbed over, and every movement pulls at the skin. By the time she has her pants halfway up her leg, she’s bleeding again.

“Fucking…” she starts, jaw clenching, because she can do this for herself, but at this point, it doesn’t seem worth the effort. “Avi!” she shouts, closing her eyes for a moment. She takes a deep breath, promises herself she’s going to be civil even though all of the aches and pains combined with Avi’s own irritability this morning prompt her to lash out, and waits.

“What?”

Avi shows up at the door without warning, as if she’s floated there.

“I need help,” Erika manages to grit out.

It doesn’t help that she’s standing there, once again, with her pants around her knees.

“That could use a bandage,” Avi observes, her tone flat. Erika appreciates the way it seems to turn the whole situation into a business transaction, because it would be hard to retain her dignity otherwise.

Soon, there’s cold antiseptic cream being smeared on her skin yet again; she wonders why the stuff never seems to warm to room temperature. “This will work better,” Avi says. She’s got a long length of bandage in her hands, and after covering the claw marks with a piece of gauze, she winds the bandage around Erika’s thigh, securing it with three butterfly clips on the outside of her leg. “Hopefully it won’t slip.”

And then, before Erika can even tell her to back off because she can dress herself, Avi’s pulled her pants up to her waist. She gasps in surprise as Avi tucks her shirt into the waistband; the touches are clinical and brief, but there are still fingers against her skin and Avi is still standing only inches away from her, head bent as she attends to her task. From this distance, Erika can’t help but focus on the smoothness of her skin and the dark curl of her lashes. She can smell the light citrus scent of Avi’s shower gel and her body drifts forward involuntarily, so that when Avi looks up, her fingers deftly buttoning the button on Erika’s pants, they’re only inches apart.

“Thanks,” Erika rasps, unable to look away. Avi’s eyes are a deep, rich brown so dark it’s almost impossible to tell iris from pupil. Her lips are full and inviting. They glisten slightly, as if Avi’s run her tongue over them recently, and Erika remembers a first kiss she’s thinking she wouldn’t mind repeating.

“All done,” Avi says, slowly drawing up Erika’s zipper. Her voice is uncharacteristically soft, and for a second, Erika thinks she sees her drift forward to close the distance between them.

A moment later, and it’s gone. “Do you think you can do your makeup by yourself?” Avi asks, taking a step backward. Her eyes are on the floor, and then the wall to the left of Erika’s shoulder.

“Yeah,” Erika says. Her voice still hasn’t returned to normal. It’s huskier than usual, and she’s pretty sure there’s a hint of color in her cheeks. “I can probably manage.”

It takes her forever.

By the time she finishes, Avi’s in the kitchen, finishing a glass of orange juice.

“The good doctor’s at work,” she says, explaining the stillness of the house. “She took Troy to school. I promised her it was safe, but I’ll feel better about that promise once we figure out what’s going on.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence before Avi offers a tight smile and tilts her head to the side. “Breakfast,” she says, and Erika follows her gaze to the plate sitting on the table.

At the first bite of cold scrambled eggs, she realizes how long it’s been since she last ate.

“So what are you thinking?” she asks around a bite of toast.

Avi sighs, and sinks down into the chair opposite Erika’s.

“I don’t know. You’ve seen it, so we know it exists, but there’s nothing in the lore that sounds even remotely similar.”

“Maybe we’ve discovered something new,” Erika says, and smiles, pleased. “We can name it after ourselves, like those guys who find flowers and turtles.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan,” Avi replies dryly. “From now on, all big, shiny, green monsters with golden eyes will be known as Erika. It’s the perfect way to immortalize you.”

“Whatever,” Erika scoffs, downing the last of her juice, glad that a lightness has returned to their interactions. “You’re just mad I thought of it first.”

******

Ajay and Shama Skutty live on a quiet street lined with houses that all look alike, small variations on the same design stretching one after another down the street.

“No one’s home,” Erika notes, taking in the darkened windows and the empty driveway.

The look that passes between them indicates that they’re in agreement.

It’s nothing to slip through the gate and into the back. They ease along the side of the house, sliding around a lazily abandoned bike and picking their way through the prickly row of cacti embedded in gravel. Even though Erika protests that she can do it, Avi slides the lock pick into the back door’s lock, and a few seconds later, the echoing ping of the lock being turned indicates success. There’s an alarm; it beeps when they open the door, and Erika cringes, waiting for the inevitable angry symphony of a triggered alarm, but nothing happens.

“Wasn’t set,” Avi murmurs, moving quickly into the house.

They find a picture on the mantle. Ajay is tall and lean, with the gawky awkwardness of a scientist more accustomed to beakers than people, while his wife Shama has a bright and open smile. She stands just in front of Ajay, the top of her head barely coming up to his chin, with her arm slung around the neck of a thin, coltish, bashful boy with a mop of jet black curls.

“They don’t look especially evil,” Erika notes, settling the frame back into its place.

“Yeah, evil has survived since the beginning of time by being easily identified as evil.”

“Maybe,” Erika says reluctantly, aware of Avi’s sarcasm but mostly ignoring it, “but I’m just not getting that vibe. They seem… normal.”

After a thorough search of the first floor, Avi can’t help but silently agree that Erika seems right. She’s not entirely convinced that evil puts its cereal in plastic containers to keep it fresh, but the Skuttys do.

“Maybe there’s a cellar or an attic,” she says absently, frowning at the shoe caddy standing just inside the front door. At its base sits three pairs of flip-flops, arranged neatly in descending order by size.

Erika just sighs. “One more floor, and then I think we declare this an official dead end.”

The master bedroom is immaculate. The bed is made, complete with artfully arranged silk pillows. There’s a gorgeous abstract representation of the Buddha hanging on one wall and fresh flowers in a vase on the dresser. Order carries through the rest of the rooms, from the impeccably organized hall closet to the bathroom with its twin toothbrushes hanging in perfect alignment. A smaller one rests on the counter at a slightly askew angle, making it the only thing that’s even slightly out of place.

“Maybe they are evil,” Erika mutters as they push open the door to the last room. “I’ve never seen anything so neat.”

“Until now,” Avi says dryly, looking at the unmade bed in the corner and the stack of clothes piled at its foot. There’s a computer on in the corner of the room, its screensaver chasing pipes for eternity. The desk is littered with comic books and action figures, and posters are plastered across the walls, each one of them the snarling or heroic representation of a brightly drawn character. Spiderman catapults toward them from the right while Wolverine attacks from the left, claws outstretched.

“Five bucks says this is Champ’s room,” Erika says, idly leafing through the pile of comics. “And another five says he…”

It takes Avi a moment to notice that Erika’s trailed off.

“What?” she asks, turning. She finds Erika staring intently at one of the books she’s pulled from the pile.

Erika swallows, studies the book for a second longer, and finally holds it out wordlessly.

“What’s this?” Avi asks, staring down at a cover that proclaims ‘The Most Maniacal Super Hero of All! Green Goblin’. Below the title, a wizened green face stares back at her, mouth opened as if in a cackle.

“Our killer.”

******

“I think I know what’s happening.”

They leave the house just as they’d entered it, slipping out of the back door and through the gate. Erika spends the silent truck ride back to their motel contemplating just how insane she is for even considering the possibility that a character from a comic book has sprung to life and started murdering children and wondering if it’s too late to pretend she never said anything.

When Avi speaks, she cringes, because she’s fairly sure that there’s going to be some sort of condemnation coming, or at the very least, an insinuation that she’s slipped entirely off her rocker.

She doesn’t prod but Avi doesn’t appear to need it. Instead, she turns to Erika with a frown on her face, brow crinkled in thought. “It’s a tulpa,” she says definitively, adding a nod of the head for good measure. “At least I think it is.”

Erika spends the next ten seconds trying to decide whether or not it will make her look stupid to ask Avi for clarification.

In the end, she gives in. “What’s a tulpa?”

Avi bites her bottom lip thoughtfully, but the gesture seems more like she’s struggling to put things into words instead of struggling to hold back a laugh. “It’s like a thoughtform. You know, it’s sort of willed into existence.” She pauses, brow furrowing deeper. “They’re not the same thing, technically, but the lore on it has a lot of similarities. The tulpa is more intimately tied to Buddhism but some people suggest that the concept exists in a number of forms in different philosophies. The golem, for example, which is generally associated with Judaism.”

“So this kid created a monster with his mind?”

“Maybe. Yeah.” The look Avi gives her acknowledges how ridiculous the idea sounds.

“So he’s looking for a protector from the kids who’re bullying him,” Erika hypothesizes, “and thinks so hard about the scariest thing he can think of that he wills this comic book character to life.”

“It fits with the lore. I mean, usually this sort of thing is done by monks or heavy-duty practitioners, but he may have figured out a way. Or,” she pauses, expression unsure, “maybe he didn’t even know he was doing it.”

“Then we tell him to stop. We make him unwill it.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Avi drawls in the tone of voice reserved for delivering bad news. “Most of these things, once they get created, they’re kind of unpredictable. They start out following the orders of whoever willed them into being, but after a little while, they start to do things on their own. They begin to act independently, and over time, they have a tendency to turn against their creator.”

“Turn against?”

“If Champ Skutty is behind this tulpa, then he could be in danger.”

“Are you saying he can’t just think about this thing not existing hard enough to make that happen too?”

“Pretty much. Chances are it will eventually kill him.”

Erika is silent for a long moment. “Well, that sucks,” she says finally. “How do we kill it before that happens?”

“I don’t know,” Avi says, sighing.

Erika can’t stifle a look of surprise. “You don’t know? You?”

Avi shoots her an annoyed look. “I don’t know everything.”

It’s not at all the answer Erika was expecting. “So what do we do?”

“Research.”

******

Erika’s halfway through a bacon cheeseburger. Her chair is tilted back and she’s got her feet up on the edge of the bed, her injured hand tucked behind her head.

“Find anything yet?”

Avi looks up, glaring.

“Not my fault we’ve only got one laptop,” Erika notes, taking another bite. “You know I’d be all over this otherwise. There’s nothing I enjoy more than research.”

“Nothing you’re doing right now is endearing.”

Erika smirks and takes another bite. “After this, I’m probably going to take a nap. You know, convalesce.”

“Excellent. That way, you can take the first shift tonight.”

At that, Erika pauses. “First shift?”

“Uh-huh. You, me, the Skutty’s.”

“Surveillance?”

Avi looks over from the laptop long enough to flash an evil grin. “I think you’ll be fine on your own for a little while. Maybe I’ll take a nap.”

“Shouldn’t we be watching the Stones?”

“This is just a theory. We need to know if we’re – scratch that, if I’m – focusing my energy in the right direction.”

“I think I focused a significant amount of energy last night,” Erika grumbles, straightening. “The kind of energy that leaves scars.”

Avi doesn’t look nearly as impressed as she’d like. “I’ll get you your cookie later,” she drawls, and Erika lets her chair drop slowly to the floor.

“Whatever. I’m taking another pain pill. Wake me up when you’ve cracked the case, Magnum.”

It’s dark out when she feels a sharp tap against her foot. Erika pushes up slowly, wiping the back of her uninjured hand across her mouth.

“Time to go,” Avi says shortly. She’s already got a bag slung over her shoulder and is staring down at Erika impatiently.

“Already?” Erika slurs, blinking the room into focus.

“Yeah, already. Grab your gear.”

The Skuttys are having dinner. They’re the trusting sort of family, with open blinds and a house blazing with light, and Erika can’t help but feel a pang of envy.

“Have you figured out what we’re going to do with this thing if it’s really what you think it is?” she asks, shifting uncomfortably. The deep scratches down the outside of her thigh have scabbed over and are pulling the skin taut, and their sensitivity to touch has forced her to cant herself up at an odd angle on her other side. Trying to find a comfortable position is almost enough to distract her from the bone deep ache in her hand, or would be if there was any way to distract herself from that.

“Maybe,” Avi says, voice muted. “I’m waiting to hear back from someone.”

“About?”

Avi turns slowly, dragging her gaze off of the happy family. “Like I said, the lore on this is pretty sparse. Tulpas, thoughtforms, golems… they have a lot in common, even if the origin of the story varies.”

Erika holds back a sigh and wishes, for perhaps the tenth time since she began traveling with Avi, that the other woman would just get to the fucking point.

“As for how to defeat them? Virtually nothing.” Avi pauses, turning to look back at the Skuttys sitting so happily at their dinner table. “Most of what you find in the lore deals with golems, but at least there are accounts of golems being rendered inert, unlike what you see with most tulpas. Toward the end of the 16th century, the chief rabbi of Prague was said to have created a golem to protect the Jews in his city from persecution by the Emperor. The legend says that the golem grew increasingly violent, killing more and more, until the Emperor begged the rabbi to put a stop to it.”

“Which he did how?”

“The golem had the word emet, meaning truth, written on its forehead. The rabbi rubbed away the first letter, changing the word to met, or death.”

“I saw this thing up close and personal. There wasn’t anything written on its forehead.” Erika takes in a deep breath. “Do we happen to have a Plan B?”

“Other tales indicate that you can kill a golem by writing a specific incantation on a piece of calfskin parchment that you put in the creature’s mouth.”

Erika can’t help but roll her eyes. “Yeah, that sounds like it would be easy and trouble free.”

“It’s the best lead we’ve got.”

“And you just so happen to know this ancient incantation?”

Avi turns back to face Erika again, glaring. “Like I said, I’ve put in a call.”

“And calfskin parchment… do you keep some in the toolbox?”

“We’ll be improvising.”

“Ah, yes. That’s exactly what I like to do when facing a deadly and seemingly unkillable supernatural creature. Improvise.”

“Feel free to propose an alternate plan.”

“It seems obvious to me,” Erika says. “We convince Champ to create a Spiderman thoughtform and the two can battle it out.”

“You’re right,” Avi says dryly. “It’s a perfectly logical plan, and it didn’t even cross my mind. Congratulations.”

Erika shrugs. “I know you underestimate my brilliance.”

“To an immeasurable degree.”

The Skuttys move from the dining room to the living room, and Erika and Avi watch the reflected blue glow of the television on their faces for nearly an hour before Champ gets sent up to his room with a kiss to the top of the head from each parent.

“Maybe we were wrong,” Erika mutters. “This is the kind of kid who brushes his teeth before bed, not the kind of kid who unleashes a vicious thoughtform on the world.”

“You can’t trust appearances.”

“No, but I can trust my…” She trails off in mid-sentence, squinting up at Champ’s room. “Does that shadow seem a little off to you?”

The dark forms are abstract shapes behind the curtains draped in front of Champ’s window, but in this case, absolute clarity isn’t needed.

“That’s got to be it,” Avi mutters, hands tightening around the steering wheel. “Damn it.”

The smaller shadow takes a step closer to the larger, its head tilted up. “What’s he doing?” Erika asked. “Talking to it?”

“He could be sending it after a new victim.”

A second later, Erika’s hand finds the door handle and wrenches the truck’s door open. “I don’t think that’s what he’s doing,” she says urgently, already running as soon as her feet hit asphalt.

The shadows have moved, drawing even in height, but the way the smaller one kicks its feet frantically is a clear indication that it’s not a friendly chat.

“Son of a bitch,” Avi mutters, tucking a large knife into the waistband of her pants. She’s right behind Erika, pushing the door open and racing up the stairs to the sound of startled cries.

“FBI,” Erika calls out, sparing only a second’s glance at a gaping Shama Skutty. She’s already halfway up the staircase when Avi catches up to her, and together they crash into Champ’s room. “Please remain calm and stay downstairs.”

It’s got its hand around Champ’s throat. The boy is dangling a few feet off the ground, clawing uselessly at the creature’s forearm.

“Hey,” Erika shouts, drawing the creature’s attention even as Avi brings her knife down hard, driving the point into the creature’s shoulder. It howls and Champ drops to the floor in a slumped heap, his hands moving reflexively to his throat. The creature turns, as light on his feet as a sparrow, and reaches up to pull the knife from its shoulder.

It clatters to the ground.

“Oh shit,” Erika mutters. “This is not good.”

“What do you have on you?” Avi asks, eyes trained on the creature. It’s tilted its head to the side and is looking at them speculatively, as if contemplating the many ways it can kill them and measuring the satisfaction it would derive from each method.

“Knife,” Erika catalogues. “Handgun. Other handgun. Salt.”

“Try the salt.”

Erika digs into her pocket and pulls out two small, white packets of salt, like those available for take out in diners and fast food restaurants.

“For Christ’s sake, Erika, what the hell is that?”

“It’s left over from lunch,” Erika replies defensively, tearing off the top of one of the packets. “I’m trying to cut down on my sodium intake.”

With a flick of the wrist, she sends the scant quarter teaspoon of salt from the packet flying. It smacks harmlessly against the creature’s chest, bouncing off in a tiny cascade of white.

“Shoot it,” Avi shouts as the creature tenses and pounces forward, one hand outstretched. Its claws seem to gleam in the light, sharp and deadly.

Erika whips the handgun from its place at the small of her back, flicking off the safety even as she brings it to bear on the creature’s chest. The gun is locked and loaded; there’s one in the chamber, always one in the chamber, her dad had said, because sometimes you need that extra second.

She squeezes off six shots. Five hit the thing dead in the chest, creating a perfect circle, and the last catches it right between the eyes.

It pauses, straightens, and shakes itself.

“Not good,” Avi says, starting to panic. “Not good.”

Erika shoots it again, hitting a thigh, a knee, even burying a slug in its gut, but it seems unfazed.

As if I could tell, Erika thinks, looking at its mask of a face.

“What the…” The shocked exclamation comes from the doorway, and Erika and Avi both turn at the sound of it. Ajay and Shama Skutty are standing there, him with a bat in hand, staring at the scene with sheer terror.

“Run!” Avi yells, because the creature is starting to move again. “Go. Get out of here!”

“Champ!” Shama screams, her eyes meeting Champ’s wide, frightened ones as she turns to clutch her husband’s arm. “Ajay, we can’t leave him.”

The speed with which things happen next is dizzying.

Shama lurches forward, hands outstretched, calling Champ’s name over and over even as Ajay tries to pull her back. Avi drops to the floor, skittering over to her abandoned knife and drawing it up above her head, preparing to strike again. Erika raises her gun once more, muzzle shifting as she tries to work out a spot on the creature which might be vulnerable.

And Champ rises unsteadily to his feet.

“Stop,” he says, voice trembling. He brings his hands up to cover his ears, as if trying to block out the sound of his mother’s terrified shrieks. “Please. Don’t hurt anyone else. Please.”

The creature freezes, some part of it held in check by the sound of its master’s voice, and the rest of them freeze along with it.

“Avi,” Erika hisses, “get out of here.”

“No,” the other woman says firmly.

“You’re the only one who might be able to stop this thing. Work it out.”

There’s a moment of hesitation before Avi nods shortly. She moves slowly, slinking away from the creature. Its gaze shifts with her, like a predator tracking prey, but it doesn’t move.

“Keep talking, Champ,” Erika encourages, circling around so that she’s closer to the boy. If the creature moves, if it goes after him again, she’s close enough to be able to put her body between it and Champ’s.

She barely sees Avi pull Ajay out of the doorway, though she hears his muffled protestations.

“Stay there,” she cautions Shama, holding out a hand as if to physically keep her in place. “I’ll protect him.”

“I didn’t want this,” Champ says. Tears are flowing freely down his cheeks and his voice is tight and watery, full of remorse. “I don’t know… I just wanted to be safe. I wanted them to stop pushing me around. I’d dream about it at night, about him coming to protect me. And he… he just showed up.”

“He’s under your command, but barely,” Erika murmurs, drawing another step closer to Champ. “Tell him to back down.”

She watches as Champ’s thin shoulders straighten. He looks terrified; the fear is reflected in his voice.

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone,” he says, sniffling. “Please stop hurting people.” His voice cracks. “Please.”

Erika tightens her grip on the stock of her gun, mentally urging Avi to hurry.

******

“Who the hell are you?”

Ajay Skutty is glaring at her, but Avi doesn’t have time to explain.

“I want you to listen carefully to me,” she says, putting a hand on each of his shoulders and forcing him to look at her. “Everyone is in grave danger here. That thing up there is close to killing us all, and I’m going to need your help to stop it.”

He goes pale and swallows hard, because these are things he already knows but it’s still hard to hear them confirmed. “What is it?” he rasps. “What is that thing?”

“It doesn’t matter right now. I need you to focus. Where’s your computer?”

“My computer?”

Her fingers tighten, digging into his flesh. “Now,” she says harshly. “Where is it?”

There’s only a moment of hesitation before he nods in the direction of the corner. “There. In the study.”

She remembers now. They’d seen it when they were in the house before.

“I need leather,” she says, already moving. “Anything, but it has to be big enough to write on.”

“I have a leather jacket. Will that do?”

“Get it.”

She logs onto her e-mail, fingers flying, and nearly faints with relief when she sees the message waiting in her inbox.

“Here,” Ajay says, returning with a black leather jacket held outstretched.

Avi doesn’t hesitate. She pulls an old Case knife from her pocket, flicks it open, and cuts a square panel from the back.

“I need a pen. A marker. Something.”

He pulls open a drawer, rummages through it nervously, and then hands her a red Sharpie.

“Is this okay?”

She takes it without answering, flipping the piece of leather over so that she’s looking at the rough, untreated side. The incantation is attached to the e-mail, and she copies it as quickly and as accurately as she can before rolling the leather up like a scroll.

“If this doesn’t work,” she says, already racing back across the living room, “you and your family need to run. I don’t know if you can find a place where you’ll be safe, but try. This thing isn’t going to stop.”

The scene upstairs is just starting to devolve into chaos. Champ is babbling and Erika’s moving to stand in front of him. The room echoes with the sharp crack of gunfire, but the creature is moving forward with purpose and doesn’t stop. Shama is already scrambling across the floor, desperate to reach her son, and Avi’s pretty sure that they’re all going to be dead in the next minute if she doesn’t stop it.

She takes the long, iron bladed knife in her hand, brings it back over her shoulder, and throws it with deadly accuracy, burying it to the hilt in the creature’s back.

“Please,” Champ begs, the word little more than a panicked wheeze. “Please.”

The creature falters slightly, as if it’s been startled, but doesn’t stop.

It’s tall, so Avi needs all the momentum she can muster to fling herself onto its back. The hilt of her own knife hits her hard in the ribs and she grunts, struggling to gain purchase on the creature’s slippery, exoskeleton-like skin. She ends up shimmying up the creature like it was a tree, hooking one arm around its neck and holding on as tightly as she can as it bucks and flails. She’s slammed into the wall with a sickening thud, her head bouncing off of the drywall, and for a brief moment, things go black around the edges. There’s no way to injure the thing, no way to dig her fingers into its eyes or tear at its skin, so she takes the now wadded up piece of leather and aims as best she can, hoping she’s close to stuffing it into its mouth.

She hits a razor sharp canine and cries out, instantly feeling the warm spill of blood running down her forearm.

“Lower,” Erika calls out, even as she’s slammed back into the wall again.

Her grip is slipping, jarred by the crushing blows and by her increasingly tenuous grip on consciousness. She tightens her arm around the creature’s neck as best she can, lunges forward once more, and again tries to press the ball of leather into its mouth.

She feels the cut of sharp teeth again, scraping deep grooves in her skin. The creature gives a roar and finally manages to dislodge her. She goes flying across the room, hitting the wall hard. Things go black for a moment; when she blinks the room back into focus, she’s slumped on the floor. It takes a second to get her bearings, to remember why she’s there. It’s hard to forget, though, because the creature is still there so they haven’t won yet, haven’t done whatever it is they need to do. She tries to push up so that she’s back on her feet, because it isn’t over, but her arm buckles under the pressure; she knows enough to know it’s broken, and uses her leverage against the wall and a handhold on the foot of Champ’s bed to struggle up to her feet, eyes scanning the room for a weapon.

The sounds the creature is making are utterly inhuman, a high screech of agony that makes them all cringe in pain. It wavers like a mirage and lurches forward, unsteady on its feet. Erika steps in front of Champ, her gun raised as it swipes out at her viciously, but its claws pass through her without causing damage. It looks down, outraged, and tries again, but it’s starting to shimmer, as if it’s on the verge of winking out of existence.

With a shocking suddenness, it’s gone and the room is quiet.

Shama closes the distance between herself and Champ, wrapping him tightly in her arms. Ajay follows seconds later, crying with relief, and Erika stumbles, adrenalin wearing off almost immediately.

“Avi?” she calls out, watching as Avi slumps against the bed, the hand she’s using to support herself unsteady.

“I’m fine,” Avi says, struggling to maintain her footing.

It’s clear she’s not. She’s cradling one arm protectively and there’s blood dripping freely onto the floor from a multitude of cuts. Erika can tell by the way she’s hunched that she’s in a great deal of pain.

“Shit,” she says suddenly, clutching her side before falling to her knees and vomiting into the trashcan beside Champ’s desk.

“Call 911,” Erika says to no one in particular. “She’s got a broken arm and a concussion and no telling what else.”

“No,” Avi moans, working herself back up to her feet. “No hospitals.”

“There’s no negotiating this.”

Avi wants to protest, because it’s a stupid idea. They’re better off the less they get involved with the system, but she knows, also, that there’s no way she can set this bone herself.

“Fine,” she mutters, “but just to get patched up.”

******

While Avi’s getting her cast, Erika calls Su to let her know the problem’s been solved and convinces Shama and Ajay that she and Avi are part of an elite, secret branch of the FBI.

“Kind of like the X-Files,” she tells them, “only real.”

After what they’ve just seen, neither of them is really in a position to contradict her.

“It’s important that you keep what we did here a secret,” she cautions them, looking at each of them in turn. “Otherwise, it could jeopardize everything.”

She’s convinced that it sounds grave and appropriately paranoid, as if there’s a larger conspiracy at work. Either way, the Skuttys look terrified and convinced.

“And you,” she tells Champ, “be careful what you wish for.”

The doctor tells her that they’re going to keep Avi overnight for observation, so after she feels appropriately assured that the Skuttys will keep their secret, she heads upstairs to Avi’s room.

“What are you doing?” she asks, watching as Avi finishes pulling her shirt on with a wince.

She has matching sets of bandages on both of her hands, and a cast runs down the length of her right forearm in a solid, imposing black. Her breathing is shallow as she tries not to agitate bruised ribs.

“We can’t stay here,” Avi says, as if it should be obvious.

“The doctor wants to observe you overnight to make sure there’s nothing more serious going on with your,” she pauses, pointing at her own skull, “you know, head injury.”

“I’m fine,” Avi bites out. “For now, but if somebody decides to contact the FBI to reassure them that their agent is alive and well…”

She leaves the sentence unfinished but looks at Erika meaningfully.

Erika shakes her head. “Fine,” she allows, “but I’m driving.”

Avi’s look narrows into a glare, but she reluctantly hands over the keys.


	10. Chapter 10

Ten Years Earlier

She’s finished her last final, turned in her last paper, and started packing. She doesn’t have much, clothes enough to fill a duffle and her laptop, so as soon as her Daddy gets there, they can get on the road. She hasn’t heard from him in two weeks. The last time he called, he was on the trail of a vampire clan, slogging through the mud in a place called Georgetown somewhere in coastal South Carolina. She can’t wait to be back on the hunt again. School is sort of worth it, because even if her advisor doesn’t understand the seemingly random pattern of classes she takes and laments at every session that Avi’s never going to finish if she keeps on the way she is, there are definite practical applications for what she’s taking that the woman will just never understand.

Two years in, and she’s gone through majors like a sieve – religious studies, journalism, anthropology, applied linguistics. She’s put in two years of Army ROTC. Any more and she’d actually have to sign up for the Army, but they’ve already learned about military operations and tactics, leadership, and the principles of war, so not only has she picked up skills, she’s had plenty of time to soak up the intangibles that she’ll use to fill in the gaps left by forged identification badges and fake uniforms. In fact, she’s already used it on breaks and between terms, traveling with her father for the brief stretches of time she has free; her basic ROTC training has given her the added hint of swagger and entitlement that blinds people just enough so that they don’t doubt that she’s from the FBI or the Sherriff’s Department. It gives her heft, ages her, makes her the sort of person who isn’t questioned.

Her wardrobe isn’t particularly complicated or diverse. There are tee shirts, divided pretty evenly between those with the letters LSU and those with the letters ROTC written on them somewhere. She has jeans and BDU pants, two pairs of black dress slacks, three identical white button downs, and a few dresses for those occasions when she needs something with a higher class of serviceablility. Other than that, it’s just a few photos. Her guns stay at her daddy’s place, her knife stays tucked into her boot, and the notes she’s been painstakingly transcribing stay in her backpack.

There’s a sense of exultation in the air. Summer vacations won’t be options for much longer, so even though a quarter of the students are headed home to work, a quarter are just being shifted around to another dorm for the summer semester, and the rest are spending as much time as possible not thinking about what they’re going to do for the next two and a half months, it’s still a release. Avi can almost taste it. She can feel the vinyl of the seat in her daddy’s old truck crackling beneath her as she climbs into the cab. She can feel the sun on the side of her face and see the road stretching out before them, the comforting silhouette of her father visible just out of the corner of her eye.

She can almost hear his voice.

The sun’s starting to set as she puts the last of her things into the duffle. It’s getting close to time; she’s supposed to be out front at 8:00, and even though she has no idea how that came to be the decided upon time, she has no doubt that her daddy will pull up right on the dot.

The knock at the door startles her, and she shakes her head, wondering what last minute rule or regulation this will be. They’ve already had inspections, and she’s complied with every request, no matter how seemingly petty, on the list her resident advisor handed her earlier. As far as she can tell, it’s all part of some elaborate plan to make sure she trips up and forfeits her deposit, but she’s pretty confident that they’re not going to be able to catch her out.

She swings the door open with a smile that falters when she sees who’s standing there.

“Uncle Etienne?” she says, confused.

Uncle Etienne is her father’s older brother, but where her father’s face is open and laughing, her uncle’s face is stern and cold. It doesn’t reflect his personality. She’s always been one of his favorites, and the stiff outer shell always cracks into pieces with a broad, teasing smile, usually followed by a warm hug.

There’s no hug this time. No smile either.

“Avi,” he says, and she can hear it in the tone of his voice. It’s dark, heartbroken.

She falls into him, not even needing to be told.

******

She wants revenge, but there’s none to be had.

“This came in the mail,” Uncle Etienne says, handing her a thick brown envelope.

She takes it but doesn’t open it. She’s sitting on the edge of the bed, forearms braced on her knees. Her Uncle’s hand is a comforting presence on her shoulder.

“What happened?” she asks, looking up at him. “How did he…” She chokes on the word and tries again. “How did he…”

Etienne sighs, sinking down into the room’s single chair.

“He called,” Etienne says, the words hitching as he hears Avi take in a steadying breath. “He couldn’t call you,” he continues immediately, knowing it’s what Avi’s thinking, wondering why she’s been left out in the dark. “He was on the trail of an old and powerful clan. They’d been getting reckless, killing more often and more publicly, and Beau had tracked them down through South Carolina into Georgia. They were a marsh clan, always staying along the water, but he thought they were heading to Atlanta and the change bothered him. There was nothing in Atlanta but people to be killed, at least for a clan like this.”

He pauses, hands dropping down into his lap.

“He finally caught up with them in a small town just east of the city.”

He doesn’t say any more, the look on his face pained.

“What happened?” Avi asks urgently. She doesn’t like the look on her Uncle’s face, reticent and pained, but she needs to know.

“He was outnumbered, Avigail,” Etienne says helplessly, looking away from her. “And they knew, somehow. They knew he was tracking them.”

“They set a trap,” Avi deduces, whispering out what she knows to be the truth. “They killed him.”

“No,” Etienne says, his voice cracking. He brings a hand to his face, covering his eyes, and she gets a feeling in the pit of her stomach, hard and heavy like a stone.

“Avi, they…” he begins roughly, finally showing her his eyes, and she watches as he blinks back tears. “They turned him.”

It’s like a punch to the gut. She gasps, eyes closing, not wanting to believe what she’s just heard.

“So, he’s…” She grows sick, thinking about it. Thinking about what she already knows she can’t do to the creature now wearing her father’s face.

“No,” Etienne says firmly, and she watches as he tries to pull himself together long enough to finish the tale. “It was their mistake, giving him their strength.” He shakes his head, because there’s no silver lining to be found in this story, even if this masquerades as one. “He went back that night. He killed them all.”

She feels a moment of false relief, as if this is the end. As if things will return to normal now. “So he…”

“He called me after,” Etienne says, cutting her off, unable to hear her impossible hope. “He was… you could hear the change in his voice.” He closes his eyes, as if trying to wipe the sound of it from his mind.   
“He told me the hunger was growing too strong. He couldn’t do it. He was losing himself and fast. There was so little time left.”

She stays silent now, afraid to ask.

“They found a car,” Etienne says finally, his hand reaching forward, his fingers tangling with hers. “Facing east. Burned, with him inside.”

She knows her father well enough to immediately know what that means, and tears slip down her face as she thinks of him sitting there alone, made into a monstrosity, waiting on the sun to rise.


	11. Chapter 11

Present Day

Avi’s on fire. It starts at her fingers; the skin blackens and cracks and the pain of it is so deep and so profound that she howls until she can’t scream any longer. It moves slowly up her arm, and she tries to jerk away, tries to unwrap her fingers from the steering wheel, but when she looks, she sees only the skeletal remains of a hand.

Her feet skid across the floorboard, and she uses the leverage to buck back into the seat, but there’s no relief. Instead, pain shoots across her midsection, starting at her ribs and wrapping all the way around. It hits her that she’s trapped, that there’s no escape from the intense burn creeping slowly up her body, because the sun is climbing over the horizon. It’s a deep orange, heavy and thick and hanging low in the sky.

She gives up, stilling, focusing on the last sunrise she’s ever going to see.

“Avi.”

The sun rises higher in the sky, bringing with it streaking lines of blue and gold and she smiles. It’s going to be beautiful.

“Avi, come on.”

The heat is to her chest now. Flecks of black float in front of her eyes – ash – and she blinks, trying to clear them away.

“Avi, the doctor said I have to wake you up every four hours. Come on. Don’t make me poke you.”

A few more minutes and she’s going to be free. She tells herself it doesn’t even hurt anymore. She tells herself there’s nothing but peace.

“Damn it, Avi.”

It’s almost time.

The poking registers first as an annoyance, and then as a painful annoyance.

“What the hell?” Avi asks hoarsely, and suddenly the sun is gone. She’s in the truck, slumped down uncomfortably in the passenger’s seat, and they’re not moving. It’s dark outside the window, but she gets the impression of a vast emptiness stretching out as far as the eye can see. “I was almost…” She trails off, not sure what she was planning to say. Instead of pulling the half formed thought from memory, she swallows hard. “Where are we?”

“Just outside Flagstaff,” Erika says, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her uninjured hand. “I had to wake you up. The doctor said to, every four hours.”

“I’m not dead, so good job,” Avi says irritably. She tries to straighten but stops abruptly when pain lances through her ribs. “Do we have any water?”

Her mouth is dry, as if stuffed with cotton.

There’s a plastic bag sitting between them. Erika digs through it, pulling free a bottle.

“If you hold it,” she says, end pointing Avi’s way, “I can unscrew the lid.”

Avi laughs shortly, one hand drifting absently to her ribs. “We’re pathetic,” she says, gripping the bottle in the hand not covered with a cast. “Is it going to take us both to tie our shoes in the morning, too?”

“I was planning on going barefoot.”

“That seems like a phenomenally bad idea, given our usual housing arrangements.” Avi pauses to take a sip of water. “When are we stopping, anyway?”

“Think you can make it another four or five hours?”

Avi cuts her eyes over at Erika. “Are the motels in this part of the woods not up to your liking?”

“I made a call,” Erika says, shrugging. She puts the truck into gear again and eases them off of the overlook she’d pulled onto when it was clear that Avi wasn’t going to respond to more gentle requests to wake up. “We’re going to stay with a friend of mine in Phoenix.”

“Who?” Avi brings a hand to her forehead, massaging her temples. There’s a dull, thudding ache behind her eyes, and the longer she’s awake, the more pronounced it gets.

Erika checks the rear view mirror. There’s no one behind them; she hasn’t seen headlights for miles. “Javie.”

Erika’s expecting more questions.

“I’ve never been to Phoenix,” Avi mumbles sleepily. She starts to slump over again, head resting against the cool glass of the window. Out of the corner of her eye, Erika sees the water bottle begin to list dangerously and she reaches over, snatching it from Avi’s grasp.

“Avi?” She waits a moment, but there’s no reply. “Are you asleep again?”

“In a minute,” Avi slurs, clearly barely holding on to consciousness, and Erika smiles.

“He didn’t say you had to be awake for long, I guess,” she murmurs, bringing her injured hand up to rest gingerly on the top of the wheel. “Still, if you could avoid death or further traumatic brain injury, that’d be great.”

When she’s met with silence, she sighs. She blinks her eyes, focuses again on the road, and listens to the soft sounds of Avi breathing.

******

They pull into town along with dawn. The streets are slowly coming to life, the earliest of the early morning workers sitting only one or two deep at stop lights. It’s been nearly a year since she was last there, but Erika remembers the streets. She can spot the differences, storefronts now empty and new construction taking up once empty space. It’s the closest thing she has to home, and something inside her settles.

Javie’s lifting up the door on the last bay when she pulls up to the garage. He turns slowly at the sound of the truck’s engine idling, putting a hand to his eyes to block out the glare of the sun. She watches him take in the vehicle first, starting at the tires and moving up; he’s got a cigarette hanging lazily from his lips. It ticks upward slightly when he sees her climb out of the driver’s side, and then he’s rubbing at his beard and smiling at the same time.

“Hey, you,” he says, flicking the cigarette to the side.

She smiles wearily, meeting him halfway for a hug. “Hey, you.”

It’s not the same. He doesn’t smell like her dad. His shoulders aren’t as wide and his grip isn’t as tight, but it’s good enough.

“You look like shit,” he murmurs, pushing her back far enough to look her over. “You been driving all night?”

She nods. “From New Mexico.”

He shakes his head but looks at her fondly, as if such behavior is only to be expected. “The place is yours for as long as you want it, but I hope you’re not hungry. There’s not much up there. Elena said she’d do some shopping later this morning.”

“Tell her not to worry.” Erika sighs, arches her back, and feels vertebra pop. “I just want to sleep.”

Javie nods, face now impassive. He glances over at the truck, at Avi, slumped in the passenger’s seat.

“The friend I was telling you about,” Erika explains. “She had a bit of an accident.” A smile creeps across her face as she anticipates Avi’s outrage. “You may have to help me get her upstairs.”

He scratches at his beard again, too used to the chaos that weaves through Erika’s life to be fazed by any of it. “Do I need to hide the truck?”

“We don’t have police on our tail. It should be fine.”

“Good,” he grunts. “I’d like to keep her here. She sounds like she could use some work.”

Erika’s eyes light up. “I’ve got some ideas. Let me get a little sleep under my belt, and we’ll talk. Do you have the space?”

“I will by tonight.”

The creak of hinges in need of oil catches their attention. They turn to see Avi climbing gingerly out of the cab, taking in a hissing breath as each foot hits pavement. “Jesus. Fuck,” she mutters, face twisting with pain. She steadies herself against the seat with her unbroken hand before straightening slowly. Once on solid ground, she flicks her eyes over to the open garage bay before focusing back on Erika. “Something wrong with the truck?”

For a moment, Erika is tempted to list off the many improvements she thinks Avi should consider.

“This is my friend Javie,” she says instead, walking forward casually. She slips an arm around Avi’s waist, ignoring the way the other woman stiffens in protest. “He’s letting us stay here for a while.”

“I’m fine,” Avi snaps, but Erika doesn’t release her grip, so she takes a second to glare at her before turning to Javie and gritting out a pained smile. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same here.” Javie’s grin goes crooked, eyes flicking up to Erika’s. She can read his expression clearly and rolls her eyes, because it’s a fair mix of amusement and bemusement, and she’s pretty sure she’s going to have to set him straight on the true nature of her friendship with Avi before his misinterpretation of the situation gets any worse.

“Maybe we should get upstairs,” Erika says, conscious of how much weight Avi’s letting her support, despite her protestations, “before you start getting customers. They might get the wrong idea about you.”

“What? That I’m sheltering fugitives?” Javie laughs. He’s already turning, leading them through the garage to a set of stairs set behind a door in the back. “That’d be the right idea, wouldn’t it?”

Erika smirks. “Not this time.”

“I’m sure you’ve got warrants on you somewhere.”

“Not in Arizona.”

“Yet.”

They take the stairs slowly. More so than the concussion, it’s Avi’s bruised ribs that make everything difficult, from breathing to moving.

“David stayed up here for a couple of weeks after his wife kicked him out, but I think everything’s pretty much the same as the last time you were here,” Javie is saying. “There’s still coffee in the freezer, and I picked up a 12-pack of your favorite when I stopped for gas this morning. If you want, I can bring up something from the vending machine.”

Erika laughs, glancing over at Avi. “Always generous. Maybe later, huh?”

Avi’s taking sharp, deliberate breaths through her nose in an attempt to distract herself from the pain. She’s putting one foot in front of the other with determined precision because she can see the corner of the bed through an opened doorway and the notion of being on it, flat on her back, is ridiculously appealing.

Erika has to help ease her down. She takes it in stages, sitting first and then reclining back. The sense of relief that passes through her as she sinks down into the mattress is almost overwhelming.

“Think you can help me with the couch?” Erika asks Javie, smiling faintly at look of contentment on Avi’s face.

The bedroom is separated from the rest of the small apartment, but the living room and kitchen open up into one another, divided only by a counter. The springs squeak loudly as they fold the couch out into a bed, and Javie disappears long enough to pull a set of sheets out of the pantry.

“So that’s the daughter of the famous Beau, huh?” Javie murmurs, careful to keep his voice low, as he pulls a corner of the sheet down over the edge of the mattress.

Erika grins. “You remember those stories?”

“How could I forget? You know your dad. He told the same ones over and over again.”

“Especially when he got a couple of beers in him.” She steps back, admiring their handiwork. “I’ve got to get our bags.”

He nods. “The boys will be in soon.”

“You still have Efrain running the front?”

“That boy can’t fix cars for shit, but he’s good with people.”

“Good. He owes me $50.” She pauses, makes sure she has Javie’s attention, and adds seriously, “We’re just traveling together for a little while. That’s all it is.”

His smile in return is indulgent. “Whatever you say, güera.”

She carries up only the things they need most, leaving the rest locked in the truck. She drops the bags in the middle of the floor, digs through one with her good hand, and gets a glass of water from the kitchen.

“You can take these now,” she says. Avi’s laying on the bed where she left her, legs hanging off the end. “Pain pills.”

It takes a minute, but finally Avi groans, pushing up on an elbow. “I’m getting too old for this,” she mutters as Erika shakes a pill into a bandaged palm. She chases the pills with the glass of water, nearly draining it, before sinking back down against the bed. “I don’t think it used to hurt this much.”

“No, it always hurt this much.” Erika can’t help but smile. “You just forget quicker when you’re younger.”

Avi’s already kicked off her shoes, but she’s still wearing her white button down and black pants. She doesn’t look at all disposed to move – is maybe even already asleep again – so Erika takes a deep breath, leans over, and fumbles with the button on her pants.

She nearly jerks away in surprise when Avi moves.

“Not the time or the place,” Avi drawls sleepily, her uninjured hand coming up to swat at Erika.

Erika catches it gently, presses it back into the mattress, and rolls her eyes. “I’m just getting you out of these clothes.”

Avi’s eyes blink open sleepily. “Like I said.”

For a moment, Erika hesitates, unsure what to say. “You’ll be more comfortable without them,” she murmurs finally, fingers finding the button on Avi’s pants once more. Zipper halfway down, she pauses and adds suspiciously, “Is this… Are you flirting? Is this you trying to flirt?”

Avi sighs, but lifts her hips as Erika tugs. “You’re the one trying to get into my pants.”

“For practical reasons.” Eyes narrowing, Erika asks, “Is that pain pill working already?”

“I don’t know. Do you hear that ringing?”

“Ringing?”

“God, it won’t stop.”

“Ah,” Erika says, oddly relieved. She starts on Avi’s shirt buttons. “This is the concussion talking. Ringing in the ears, some disorientation. Congratulations, you’ve got the classic symptoms.”

“I’m not disoriented. You’re taking off my clothes.”

“So you don’t have to sleep in them.”

“You stare at me.”

Erika stills suddenly, eyes focused on her hands. “No, I don’t.”

“You’re not exactly subtle.”

“It doesn’t mean anything,” she mutters, drawing in a deep breath.

“Good,” Avi says, sighing. Her eyelids flutter, and her words start to slur. “It wouldn’t be a good idea, if it meant something. It’d just make things complicated.”

“Come on,” Erika says, jaw tightening. She wraps her arm around Avi’s back, pulling her up and into her, and tugs awkwardly on Avi’s sleeve, finally getting it off, before gently lowering her back to the bed. She slides the remaining sleeve over Avi’s cast, considers moving on to her bra, and decides to leave things as they are. Instead, she pulls Avi’s legs up onto the bed one at a time, maneuvering her so that she’s on the mattress as best Erika can manage with one good hand.

“It might not be so bad,” she says softly, because the words sting. Gently, she pulls the sheet up to Avi’s chest. “It might not be complicated.”

Avi mumbles something in her sleep, the words incomprehensible, and turns away.

******

She can tell she got a few hours of sleep, even if it doesn’t feel like it. For one thing, the room is brighter, and the sounds coming from the shop below have changed.

There’s no use trying to go back to sleep. Her brain is already buzzing, already hyperalert. It’s the kind of tension she feels when she needs to move, to do something other than just sit still, so she rolls to the edge of the mattress with a sigh.

She showers carefully, washing her hand gently and drying it thoroughly, and leaves her hair wet. The scratches on her thigh have scabbed over completely but she awkwardly wraps a bandage around them anyway. She does the same for her hand, the tape she uses already itching, and decides there’s little that can be done for her face.

In the fridge, she finds a 12-pack of Fanta Strawberry and smiles.

“You’re a good man, Javie,” she murmurs, cracking one open and taking a long drink.

Exhaustion has settled into her bones, but there’s nothing for it, and the last thing she’s going to do is rattle around the apartment all day.

The coveralls are hanging on a rack in the closet, just like she knew they’d be. Navy, with a white patch over her right breast with her name written in the same navy thread, and if she’s not going to sleep, then she’s going to work.

“When did you get that?”

She jumps at the unexpected sound of Avi’s voice.

“What?” Erika’s extremely conscious of fact that she’s wearing nothing more than her bra and panties but forces herself to turn slowly, as if unaffected. “Why aren’t you asleep?”

“The noise woke me up,” Avi says groggily, and drops her line of sight back down to the tattoo wrapped around Erika’s side. The edge is a ragged starburst, the center filled with a five-pointed star trapped in a circle. It’s done in thick lines with black ink so dark it looks new. Avi’s eyes linger on it for a long moment before sliding down, making s slow pass down Erika’s body and back up to the tattoo. “I’ve been meaning to ask about it.”

Erika follows Avi’s gaze down to the tattoo; it’s been there for so long that, for the most part, she’s forgotten about it. “This?” she asks, running her hand across the design. She watches silently as Avi’s eyes make a slow circuit down her legs and back up, and her mouth is dry, voice hoarse, when she says, “A long time ago.”

“It looks familiar. What is it?”

“A sigil.” Erika reaches back into the closet, pulling a white tee shirt from another hanger. She pulls it on slowly, and balances against the wall as she steps into the legs of the coveralls. “It protects against demonic possession.”

Avi arches a brow. Her gaze is unfocused, but Erika doesn’t know if that’s from the concussion or because of her. “You think one little tattoo is enough to protect you?”

She slips her injured hand through the sleeve of the coveralls carefully but shrugs the other one on carelessly. A quick tuck of the tee into the suit, and she brings the zip up to mid-chest, dressed and armored. “Yeah, pretty much,” she says, and looks for any change in Avi’s eyes.

Avi laughs. Her eyes flutter shut sleepily. “I should get one of those.”

Opportunity gone, Erika sighs. “Yeah, you should get one. I’ll take you when you feel up to it.”

Avi hums absently as if she doesn’t believe her. “You look like Rosie the Riveter.”

Erika laughs softly and pulls her hair up into a messy ponytail. “I’m going to help Javie out in the shop for a while. You’ll be okay, right?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Erika hesitates for a moment. “I’ll put your cell here, on the table,” she says, digging into the pocket of Avi’s pants to find it. “You call if you need anything.”

Avi sighs. “Yeah, I’ll call.” She’s silent for a moment before her brow knits in confusion. “Hey, where did my clothes go?”

“I took them off for you,” Erika says, suddenly concerned. She sits on the edge of the mattress before she can stop herself; one hand reaches out to brush the hair off of Avi’s forehead, but stops short. “You don’t remember?”

Avi shrugs, waving her concern away. “Maybe. I don’t know. Things are a little hazy.”

“Maybe we should take you back to the doctor.” Erika frowns. Up close, there’s a hint of pallor underlying Avi’s normally healthy complexion.

“It’s a concussion. I’m pretty sure I remember that correctly.”

Erika can’t hold back a droll, “So you remember your fight with the little green man.”

“Nothing little about him.” Avi glares. “I just need to rest. What’s a doctor going to do, except tell me to take it easy?” Avi blinks again and shakes her head. “You look ridiculous in that. You know that, right?”

“Whatever,” Erika relents, only halfway pretending to be hurt. “I look sexy.”

Avi’s look is dry. “Whoever told you that wasn’t doing you any favors.”

Erika pushes up to her feet, satisfied that Avi will be okay if she leaves her alone. “No, it’s… I just need to be dirtier and sweatier for you to get the full effect.”

“Yeah, okay. Sure.” 

“I’ll bring up something to eat later.”

“Fine.”

“Unless you’re hungry now.”

“Erika,” Avi snaps, eyes flicking open long enough for her to formulate a glare. “Go play with your cars.”

It’s more than enough to convince Erika to go.

******

Javie just gives her a look, as if he knew this was going to happen and had maybe even pegged the exact time. His eyes flick down, taking in the uniform, one corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile.

“Samuel’s doing a water pump down in two,” he says, stuffing his hands in his pockets. “Help him finish it up then take whatever’s next in line and send him to lunch.”

Samuel greets her with a grin and a tilt of the chin. She falls into rhythm with him slowly, readjusting her body to the flow of a job where the greatest danger lay in the form of a slipped wrench and scraped knuckles.

There’s something refreshing about the work.

She sends Samuel off to lunch with a $20 bill and instructions to bring her back enough for two, then finds the next job in line and gets started. The time slips away and he’s back before she expects. She’s in the middle of an oil change. Her hands are already dirty and it feels good; her skin is dusted black with the road dirt that seems to cover everything and it makes her think of sitting at her dad’s side, handing him tools and soaking in lectures.

“Lunch,” he says, showing her a bag and then disappearing again. It takes her another 10 minutes to finish up, and by the time she does, he’s ready to switch off again. She washes her hands with the rough pumice soap Javie keeps by the sink on the wall and grabs the bag. She smells tacos, laden with meat.

Avi is still sleeping, so she pulls out a plate, puts a couple of tacos and a fork on it, and refills the glass of water on the bedstand. She eats hers standing at the counter, relishes in the normalcy of having a place she can call home – if only momentarily – and thinks about the people waiting for her in the garage below.

It’s the danger of being at Javie’s. She’ll never leave the road, never stop being a hunter, but there are times when she wants to settle down. There are times when she wants to forget about all of the things she’s seen and done, about all of the things she knows are lurking out there – in the dark and in the light – and work a job that sees her at home at the end of the day. She wants someone there waiting on her, and a diner she goes to for breakfast every morning where she doesn’t even have to place an order.

She wants to drink cheap beer and hustle tourists at pool for extra spending money. She wants to be 8 years old again, with a mother and a father who love her, and an ignorance about the world that allows her to be happy.

When she steps back into the garage, Efrain is waiting for her. “I heard you were back,” he says, wrapping her into a bear hug that threatens to suffocate her.

“I always come back,” she says, wriggling out of his hold. “I have to. You owe me $50.”

“Isn’t there a statute of limitations or something on that?” he asks with a broad smile. “Come out for a beer tonight. I’ll let you win it back.”

She shakes her head at him. “Can’t tonight. I’ve got to watch my friend.”

She can see the question on the tip of his tongue, but he holds it in. “Later then. Before you leave, for sure.”

“Definitely.” She barely reigns in the impulse to punch him in the shoulder, like any good bro would do. “Taking your money is one of my favorite things to do.”

With her pitching in, they manage to clear out all of Javie’s appointments just before the close of the day. There are a few cars still there, each in the middle of some larger repair or another, but there’s a bay free down at the end. Erika pulls in the truck and she and Javie lift up the hood, each studying the engine closely.

“I want to replace it all – suspension, engine, compressors, transmission, tires, everything,” she says, arms crossed over her chest. “I want an engine with as much horsepower as you can get your hands on. I want this thing to be so fast and so slick that nothing on the road can touch it. I want it fast on the street and off-road.”

Javie nods. “That’s a lot of cash you’re talking.”

“I’ve got some saved. Whatever else we need,” she smirks, “I’m pretty sure I can win off Efrain.”

“That boy should know better than to bet his money with you.”

“Everybody should know better than to bet with me, but that doesn’t stop them.”

“You look too innocent. They don’t think you have it in you to take all their money.”

“A girl’s got to live.”

“He’s got a pretty little girlfriend to come after you this time.”

Erika shakes her head, amused by the friendly warning.

Javie’s gaze drifts back to the truck. “We can get started on this tonight. Elena knows you’re here. She doesn’t expect me back for a while.” He pauses, face softening in a smile. “She expects you out to the house as soon as your friend is up to it.”

“As soon as we can.”

“She won’t take no for an answer.”

Erika smiles fondly. “I wasn’t planning on telling her no.”

Javie takes in a deep breath, his voice soft when he says, “You don’t have to live like you don’t have a family, güera. The day you decide to stay, that apartment is yours. No question, and you’ll always have work here. I know it’s not the same. I understand you feel the need to keep on with the work you and your father started, but if the day comes when you don’t want that life no more, this life is always here.”

Erika blinks hard and swallows. She reaches over to place a hand on Javie’s shoulder and squeezes. “Let’s get started on this, yeah.”

******

The apartment is quiet. She sinks down into her bed; her lower back muscles are pulled tight and her biceps and thighs ache, and for the first time in a long time, her mind is peacefully clear. She feels nothing but exhaustion and the dull ache of her myriad injuries, but they’re white noise in the background.

She knows she needs to get up, needs to strip out of her clothes and probably shower and eat, but there’s a stillness to the place she doesn’t want to disturb. It would probably be wise to check on Avi, too, to make sure that she’s resting comfortably and not in need of anything, but she’s spent the day keeping her mind off Avi and doesn’t want to break the pattern.

It’s not like what she’s been feeling is anything special. It’s a crush at most, and it’s probably not even about Avi. It’s probably about childhood memories and the allure of New Orleans and the way she’d felt welcomed by Avi’s family. It’s probably about the fact that she’s been travelling alone for a long time, and the way she’d started to get a little lost. It’s probably tied up in the superficial, in the fullness of Avi’s lips – the way they make promises – and the tight fit of her jeans. So, if Avi doesn’t think they’re a good idea, that’s fine. It was never serious anyway.

She falls asleep like that, booted feet hanging off the side of the bed

******

Erika wakes up to the sight of Avi scowling down at her. It’s still dark outside, and she’s not sure if she’s only been asleep a couple of hours or if she’s slept through the whole night. She’s almost stiflingly hot inside her coveralls - that’s probably why she was dreaming she was trapped, paralyzed, inside a possessed house that had decided to set itself on fire.

“What time is it?” she asks, her voice a dry scratch. She brings a hand to her head to rub the lethargy of sleep away even as she curls up into a seated position. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“There’s nothing to eat here,” Avi says gruffly. She turns to head back toward the kitchen; her movements are slow and stiff. Erika can’t tell if she’s favoring one side over the other, or even if there’s any side left unhurt enough to favor.

“You slept through lunch.”

The light from the refrigerator is a stark, painful white, and Erika squints her eyes against it. 

“You mean that now disgusting mess sitting on the bedside table?”

Erika’s too tired, her mind too foggy from being pulled unexpectedly from sleep, to offer up any argument.

Instead, she pushes wearily to her feet. “There’s a convenience store a couple of blocks down. I’ll go get you something.”

For a moment, Avi’s face softens. “No. It’ll keep until morning.”

“Huh?”

In answer, Avi says each word slowly and distinctly. “I can wait until breakfast.”

Erika blinks sleepily, finally finds her bearings, and searches out the little digital clock she knows is somewhere. 

“It’s only midnight,” she says, bumping her boots against one another, heel to toe, so that her feet are settled into them again. “There’s no need to wait. It won’t take long.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry I woke you up.”

Erika waves her off. “Well, I’m awake now. I’m hungry too. I didn’t have dinner either.”

Other people might be frightened by the prospect of walking through the eerily still streets that late at night, but Erika is unfazed. It’s not that she doesn’t recognize the danger humans pose to one another. A kid with a gun and something to prove can be just as volatile and dangerous as a spirit hellbent on her destruction. And, it’s not that she’ll ever be past the point of fear. Fear has its purpose. It keeps her sharp, keeps her from getting sloppy, and reminds her to be on guard. She’s just not fearful here, on streets she’s walked more than once, with a lifetime of things more terrifying than the stillness to put things in perspective.

Despite the late hour, the convenience store is busy. There’s a lone trucker buying coffee, a delivery man wheeling in stacks of supplies, and a weary couple staring blankly at the drink coolers. The clerk nods his head at her and goes back to the book he’s reading, and Erika forces her mind to focus. The stark florescent lighting makes everything too bright, the products standing out in sharp relief, and for a moment, she’s lost. She closes her eyes, ignores the way exhaustion is creeping through her, and starts to make a list.

She grabs a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of white bread, and a half gallon of milk. She throws in a pack of cookies, snags a box of Poptarts, and picks out a bottle of painkillers. There’s a basket of single bananas by the register and she picks out several, adding, for good measure, a couple of the apples sitting beside them.

“That all?” the clerk asks, already scanning her items, and she nods.

The walk back seems longer. Her feet are starting to hurt and her hand is beginning to throb. There’s a chill in the air that makes her shiver and zip up the front of her coveralls. She realizes she’s out there without a gun, without even her knife, and suddenly the stillness seems ominous. Suddenly the streets seem unfamiliar and she begins to pay attention to the shadows and the ways they shift, even as she knows that it’s only her hyperactive imagination. She’s psyching herself out, getting anxious like a civilian, and the absurdity of it is almost enough to make her laugh.

Imaginary threats aren’t the kind about which she should be worried.

There’s a small table situated outside of the kitchen proper, underneath one of the few windows. She finds Avi there, forearms resting on the surface, head tilted back.

“How are you feeling?”

Avi doesn’t stir. “I’ve had worse.”

“Stoic as ever, I see.” Erika stows away the few groceries she’s purchased, then pulls out a couple of plates. She takes a banana, uses a fork to mash it into a pulp, and stirs in a hefty spoonful of peanut butter. “How’s the head?”

Avi looks up as Erika slides a plate in front of her and gives her a self-deprecating grin. “Some people would say hard as a rock.”

Erika rolls her eyes and disappears again, returning this time with two glasses of milk. She settles into the other chair and picks up half of her sandwich, taking a big bite before she speaks. “Well, we’re here for a while, so you have plenty of time to get back into fighting shape.”

“I’ll be fine. It won’t take long.”

Instead of calling Avi on the obvious front, not sure whether she’s caught by some need to look tough or if she honestly believes herself to be that resilient, Erika just shrugs. “We’re going to do some work on the truck. It’ll take at least a week. Maybe longer.”

The look Avi shoots her way is distrustful. “Work?”

“Avi,” Erika says, exasperated, “the truck is over 30 years old. It’s a good truck, but it needs work. With the kind of wear and tear you put on it driving all around the country, you’re lucky you haven’t had to put it in the shop for serious repairs before now.”

“I get things fixed when they break.”

“Yeah, well, instead of going about this piecemeal, let’s take the opportunity afforded us and fix the things that are broken, worn out, or on their way to being one of the two.” She pauses for a moment, looking at Avi pointedly. “That includes you.”

She can see that Avi wants to protest. Nothing she’ll say will be the truth – that she doesn’t like being hurt and that she especially doesn’t like what it means to have to rely on someone else. And to have that someone else be her, Erika thinks, smiling. Well, things couldn’t get any worse for Avi.

“Let’s not argue about it tonight,” she says, cutting off whatever protest Avi is preparing to make. “I’m tired.” She tries to soothe things over with another smile and a half-hearted joke. “I worked a legitimate job today.”

Avi braces herself on the table, rising slowly, and it takes a great deal of effort for Erika to remain in her seat. It won’t do any good to try to help her, she knows, because Avi is nothing if not stubborn.

“I’ll clean that up in the morning,” Avi says, tilting her chin down at the now empty plate and glass. She straightens carefully, and from the tight clench of her jaw, Erika can tell she’s struggling to keep any noises of pain trapped behind her teeth. She looks down at Erika for a moment and Erika lets her, not bothering to straighten her posture or offer a disarming smile. “Thanks,” Avi says finally. “We’ll talk tomorrow, okay.”

Erika nods. “Sure. Tomorrow.”

******

Avi’s still sleeping when she wakes up in the morning. She sleeps through Erika’s shower, through her second venture into the bedroom to get another pair of coveralls, and through the rattle and bang of breakfast. Erika’s relieved; Avi can be stubborn all she wants, but her body will do what it needs to do to heal.

She ambles down the stairs, poking tentatively at the stitches running along the back of her hand. She’s got another few days at least before she can even think about having them removed, but the wound appears to be healing nicely. The cuts on her leg are as well, even if they do pull every time she crouches or bends, but all of these are things she can ignore. Her face has looked better, but most of the scratches are on their way to being healed.

The garage is already coming to life. Javie’s got all the bays open; he has a cigarette between his lips and a styrofoam cup of coffee in his hand and isstanding out on the pavement in front of the garage, squinting up at the early morning sun.

“Sleep well?” he asks even before she announces her presence. The guys are slowly trickling in to work, driving down the narrow alley to the side of the building to park their cars in the back, and she knows the first customers will be close on their heels.

“I did.” She draws even with him and looks up at the sun herself, wondering what he’s trying to see. “It’s good to be back.”

“I drove the Civic this morning. I figure you can use it while the truck’s up on the lift. Elena will pick me up tonight.”

Erika can’t help her grin. “You still have that thing?”

He draws his cigarette free and crushes it out on the sole of his boot. “She’s not fancy, but she can get you to the store and back.”

The Civic had been her unofficial car whenever she and her dad had stayed with Javie. She’d driven it to school, to all the places she didn’t want her dad to know she’d been.

Impulsively, she reaches up, placing a soft kiss on Javie’s cheek. She pretends like she doesn’t see his pleased blush.

******

When she’s not working with one of the guys on a paying job, she’s working on the truck. Javie’s got a few calls in for her, looking for the parts they’d decided on the night before, so for the moment, she’s stripping out everything that needs to be replaced. She resists the urge to go and check on Avi. She’d left a package of unopened poptarts on the bedside table, along with another glass of water, so even if Avi doesn’t feel like getting out of bed, at least she’ll have something to eat. Besides, Erika has her cell in her pocket; she’s hyperattuned to it, anticipating a call for assistance she knows won’t come.

By lunch, she’s pulled off the muffler and catalytic converter. She’s got the tires piled in the corner and is starting to work on the suspension system. Between the way she’s concentrating on what she’s planning to do next and the noise of the garage, she doesn’t hear Javie until he speaks.

He laughs when she jolts with shock. “Stew,” he says again, well aware that she hadn’t heard him the first time. “Elena sent some stew. Maybe you want to take a break, feed yourself and your friend.”

She takes the tupperware container gratefully. “Tell her thanks for me, old man.”

“Tell her yourself. She’ll be by tonight.”

Erika smiles softly. “That’s right. You’re down a set of wheels.”

Halfway up the stairs, she turns to find Javie watching her fondly, a half smile on his lips.

******

Much to her surprise, Avi is awake. As best as Erika can tell, she’s somehow managed to shower and change most of her bandages, because the small trashcan is overflowing with bloodstained gauze.

Avi is at the table, struggling to bandage the cut on her hand. It’s awkward; the cast makes her movements clumsy and slow. She has her eyes closed when Erika enters, breathing deeply through her nose, obviously in pain and frustrated.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Erika murmurs, pretending not to notice anything amiss. She slides the stew into the microwave and starts it, her back to Avi as she pulls free bowls and spoons. When she turns, Avi is composed. The bandage she has been trying to affix is on the table, apparently abandoned. “You’re feeling better, I take it?”

Erika doesn’t bother with asking if she can help. Instead, she sits in the chair opposite Avi’s and immediately goes to work finishing what Avi has started. The cut looks good, no unusual swelling or redness, but the irregular shape of it necessitates the use of a patchwork of squares of gauze. She secures them into place with pieces of tape and the end result isn’t pretty, but it’s functional.

“I was tired of sleeping,” Avi murmurs, watching as Erika’s fingers move gently over the pieces of tape to make sure they’re firmly in place. “I need to do something.”

The ding of the microwave interrupts Erika before she can ask just what Avi thinks she can accomplish in her state.

“You know the toolbox on the back of the truck?”

Back still to Avi, Erika rolls her eyes. Of course she knows the toolbox on the back of the truck.

“On the driver’s side, if you dig down, there’s a bag. It’s heavy canvas. Waterproof. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”

“Okay.”

“Bring it to me.”

“Now?”

Avi sighs. “After lunch. Jesus.”

Erika’s voice goes defensive. “It sounded like a demand. Like it was, I don’t know, urgent or something.”

“Then I appreciate your willingness to be at my beck and call.”

She’s gearing up to get into an argument when she sees the slight smile curving at the corner of Avi’s lips. “Has your brain unscrambled enough to understand a suggestive comment if I make one right now?”

Avi’s incipient grin turns wry. “Unless you’re otherwise unable to contain yourself, how about you not.”

“Take away inappropriate comments and my ability to hold a conversation drops by half.”

“That doesn’t exactly help your case.”

Avi grips the spoon awkwardly; with both hands injured, each move is careful and slow. She drops the spoon twice, splashing stew onto the table and Erika bites her lip to keep from either smiling or offering to help.

“Javie’s wife Elena made this,” she says instead, closing her eyes as she tastes the familiar, welcoming flavor of green chilies and pulled pork. “When you’re a little steadier on your feet, we’ll go out to their house and have dinner.”

“You’re close to these people,” Avi notes. She’s managed to work out a system, gripping the spoon much the way she would a tool by wrapping her entire fist around it. Despite the fact that she’s slept away most of the past few days, she finds she’s famished.

Erika is immediately suspicious of Avi’s tone. “Yeah. So?”

“So why do you make out like you don’t have anybody?”

“I don’t.” Erika scowls, frustrated by the way Avi seems to be able to draw her closer and push her away at the same time. “I told you that I had a friend in Phoenix.”

“You didn’t say it was the kind of friend that keeps an apartment open for you. A kind of friend who’s willing to hide you from authorities if he needs to and lets you have the run of his shop.”

“I… What’s your point, Avi?”

“I’m just saying… you said you were lonely.”

“There’s a difference between being alone and being lonely. You should know that.”

“It’s different.”

“Different?” Erika drops her spoon into her bowl and sits back, arms crossed across her chest. “How is it different?”

Avi shrugs, and winces at the movement. “New Orleans isn’t really home.”

“Phoenix isn’t really home.”

“Maybe, but you could make a life here. You’d have a job. A place to live.”

Erika fixes Avi with a hard stare. “And you wouldn’t have that in New Orleans?”

“What, living and working with my mother? The grand seer of the Garden District? No thanks.”

Erika’s eyes narrow. “Is this about us traveling together?”

Avi remains infuriatingly silent, and Erika can’t decide if it’s a nonanswer or an answer in itself.

“You should appreciate what you have,” Erika says finally. She picks up her half-eaten bowl of stew and stands. “Avi, your family… all those people who love and care about you…” She pauses, not quite sure how to put to words her anger at everything Avi takes for granted. “You’re lucky.”

Avi makes a slow survey of the apartment before her gaze finds Erika’s again in an unspoken challenge.

“It’s different,” Erika mutters. She straightens and heads for the door. Erika thinks about Wendy and her new family, and all of the Christmas presents and birthday cards she never received. “I’ll finish this downstairs. I’ve got work to do.”

It isn’t until after she’s made her grand exit that she remembers she promised Avi she’d bring her the bag from the truck’s toolbox. Which, shit.

Like a coward, she sends it up with Javie and spends the rest of the day with her head buried in the underbelly of the truck.


	12. Chapter 12

Nine Years Earlier

She opens the envelope on the anniversary of her father’s death. It was the last part of him, the only remaining unexplained mystery he could offer her. It was yet another piece that would dislodge itself from his world and come into hers, and in her mind she has a vision of thousands of tiny, silken strings being snipped away one by one. There will come a day when the last will be severed and he’ll float away from her completely. He’ll be a distant memory and she’ll have to struggle to remember the sound of his voice, the smell of him, the way he’d react to a joke or a mistake. The day will come when she fills in parts of him with imagination instead of memory, so she holds onto the strings as tightly as she can.

The manila envelope has molded itself against its contents, nestled firmly in the bottom of her bag. The empty top half is folded over, tucked neatly against the other side; the paper is worn at the fold, scuffed and thin. She can see the contours of the object inside the envelope, can almost trace the familiar features with her fingers and imagine the cover of the old journal. There’s the buckle; the envelope is torn slightly against the rise of it, like its aching to be free. The front cover is plain, with no engravings, and the corners have long since started to wear and fray. Halfway down the spine is a small knick, running diagonally, where she had accidentally cut through the leather while sharpening her knife. She’d been sitting at a small table in a hotel room in Butte, Montana, waiting for her father. He’d returned hours later, covered in dirt and stinking of gasoline, and had smiled wearily at her earnest apology.

“It’s just a journal, baby girl, and it was an accident. One can be replaced, the other forgiven.”

But it wasn’t just a journal. It was his journal, with page after page filled with his cramped, stark handwriting. It was a history of everything he’d seen, fought, and encountered, a repository of every secret and trick he’d learned. It was his life writ small, stripped of his easy smile and the comforting warmth of the hugs he would give her at the end of each day. It was a cold, clinical assessment of demons, spirits, werewolves, shapeshifters, and more, but when she reads the words she imagines she can hear his voice. She can imagine he’s out on a hunt, doing what he does best, and when nightfall comes, he’ll be there with a hug and a smile. 

“I’m getting too old for this,” he’ll tease, and she’ll roll her eyes, because he’ll never get too old for this. Not Beau Beauvais, who spends his life terrorizing the things that usually terrorized everyone else.

She runs her knife under the flap, slitting it open cleanly. He’d never gotten too old for it because he’d never gotten old.

When she tilts the envelope, the journal slides out easily, as if it’s been waiting for her all these many months. With the snap of a button it’s open, and she takes a deep breath, nose filled with the scent of must and ink, and pulls open the front cover. It creaks slightly, the leather stiff after its period of disuse. The first page sticks to the cover; there’s a spot, matted and dark, and she pulls the pages apart gently, careful not to tear the paper.

His name is at the top of the inside cover, printed neatly and with care. Below it is something new, the letters hastily scrawled and bold.

“I love you, Avigail.”

And underneath is the streak of now dried blood – a thick drop that a thumb had tried to wipe away. Blood that had been wet the last time he’d closed the journal, causing the pages to stick together.

She closes the journal with a snap and sits back in her chair, breathing labored.

The overwhelming urge to kill something surges through her. It’s a familiar sensation; she’s spent the past year killing everything she could hunt and track. She’s ignored calls from her Uncle Etienne, from her mother, even the half-hearted attempt by her cousin Henri, all of them asking her to just please come home, just for a little while. To just stop, because she’s going to end up getting herself killed too, as reckless as she’s being. To finish school, her father would have wanted it.

The messages have moved from begging to demanding and back to begging, but she’s not going home. Home is their little house in Natchez, and there’s no home to it anymore, not without her Daddy.

She spends the afternoon staring at the journal. The cover is canted at an angle, as if it’s so glad to be free of the confines of the envelope that it’s never going to voluntarily close ever again. She can see the barest hint of writing in the space left visible, words she can’t make out through her tears.


	13. Chapter 13

Present day

“What the hell happened to you?”

Erika nearly cracks her head on the backside of a tire as she pulls away from what she’s doing. She turns, grinning goofily, and slides the wrench she’s holding into the pocket of her coveralls.

“Elena,” she says, holding her arms out for a hug.

Elena steps back, and scolds, “You know better than that. Look at you.”

Erika hasn’t even really noticed that she was covered in dirt, grime, and streaks of oil until now. Elena is, as always, impeccably dressed. Her glossy hair is pulled back in a bun, and she’s wearing a tailored black skirt suit with a crimson shirt underneath, collar and first two buttons unbuttoned. She looks young enough to be Erika’s slightly older sister, despite the gap of 20 years between them.

She smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. It’s just good to see you.”

“You could have come out to the house,” Elena says, brow raised. “But, Javie tells me you have a friend with you, and she’s injured. He didn’t tell me you were injured too. Look at your face.”

The scattershot scratches across Erika’s face are healing, and honestly the least of her concerns given her other injuries. She’s almost forgotten them, but at Elena’s reminder reaches up to touch the deepest. “It’s nothing,” she says, shrugging.

“And your hand!”

“I’m fine.”

Elena’s face softens. “You should take more care with yourself.”

“That’s what you’re here for.”

“As if I have time, with all the trouble you get into.”

Erika has always had a difficult time reconciling Elena’s sultry good looks with her profession – accounting. “That’s right,” she says, remembering. “Last time I was here, you were up for senior manager.”

“As if there was doubt that I would get it.” Elena smiles broadly. “Now I’m working on making partner.”

“Keep it up and Javie will be able to retire and lead a life of luxury as your boy toy.”

“And have him around the house all day with nothing to do? I think not. It would be a disaster.” She pauses for a beat. “Now, are you going to get cleaned up? We can go to the grocery and you can fill me in on everything that’s happened since the last time we saw you.”

Erika unzips the top of her coveralls and slips out of it, tying the arms together around her waist. Underneath, her white tank is mostly clean. “Let me wash my hands and face.”

Elena takes a long look at the rest of her and sighs.

******

It’s dark by the time Erika gets back to the garage. She’s shooed Elena away, insisting she can handle the groceries on her own, which means that she has to carry all of the heavy items in her uninjured hand. With the plastic of the bags cutting into her palm, making her fingers nearly numb, she fumbles with the key to the door of the upper floor. When the door finally swings open, she stumbles in, dumping the bags on the ground immediately.

Avi is looking up at her in a way that makes her self-conscious of her clumsiness, so she straightens deliberately, wiping her hands on her pants. “I brought groceries,” she says needlessly.

“I can see that.”

The only light on is in the kitchen. Avi’s sitting at the table where Erika had left her hours ago; she has her laptop out and on, and the light from its screen throws her face into shadows as she leans back. There’s a book on the table in front of her, opened to a point well past mid-way.

“What are you doing?” Erika takes the bags into the kitchen in two trips, wondering what it is about her pride that makes the fact that she can’t do it all in one sting as much as it does.

Avi is silent for so long that Erika begins to think she’s not going to answer.

“I’m archiving.”

Not that her answer is in any way helpful when it does come.

“Archiving?”

“I’m moving things from here,” Avi says, pointing to the book and then to her laptop, “to here.”

After their confrontation earlier that day, Erika isn’t entirely sure how to proceed. As steady as Avi seems to be, a constant immoveable force facing down everything life throws at her with stoic calm, Erika gets the sense that she’s secretly skittish. As far as things like that go, skittish knows skittish, so Erika’s pretty confident that she’s right. And the thing about skittish is that it’s constantly looking for any excuse to disappear; there’s a fine line between pushing Avi’s buttons and pushing Avi out of the door.

She’s spent the afternoon under Avi’s truck, letting work and the noise of the garage level out her thinking. It let her divide out the part of her mind that was constantly abuzz, the part that caught on to and let go of thoughts as quickly as they came, and left behind the calming comfort of complete concentration. As her hands moved through motions long familiar, her mind tried to work through her situation with Avi.

She started with the things she knows. Avi had been the bane of her adolescence, always perfect, so arrogant and smug. So fucking capable. And now, as an adult, it’s still infuriating that Avi always seems to know what to do, to have a plan sitting right there in her back pocket ready to deploy, and to be able to execute it with that effortless confidence in place.

When she’s being honest with herself, it also doesn’t take much for Erika to admit that she’s a little bit of a fuck up. She’s a con, a liar, and a thief. There are no less than three credit cards in her possession at any given time, each registered to imaginary people. Most of her money comes from hustling people at cards or pool, and when she needs a new vehicle, she usually steals it. New jobs come her way by word of mouth or luck. She doesn’t have fancy search strategies. She didn’t go to college. The truth is, she barely made it out of high school, and that was only because her dad decided they were going to stick as close to Phoenix as they could for her last year. She could have cared less about the piece of paper it earned her, but it had seemed to mean a lot to him. Unlike Avi, she doesn’t come from generations of hunters. Like her dad, she’s prone to figuring it out as she goes. She can and does do research when it’s warranted, but she’d rather take on a spirit than a stack of books any day.

She’s always been better with handling problems than she has been with figuring out solutions. With Avi, she doesn’t seem capable of doing either. Half the time, she doesn’t even know what the problem is between them.

“Grilled cheese okay?” she asks, already pulling out a pan. “I’m not much of a chef, but they’re my specialty.”

If she doesn’t know how to fix it, she might as well ignore it.

******

When Avi wakes up the next morning, Erika is already dressed and gone. She’s been sleeping more than normal lately, but she’s not going to worry about that yet. It’s been a long time since anything got the better of her to the extent that the tupla had, and rib injuries have to be her least favorite of them all. They make everything hurt, even the stillness of breathing. When it comes to breaks, she prefers the long bones. It may take them a while to heal, but at least they’re serviceable in the interim.

Erika’s left her a plate of food on the table, but the scrambled eggs and toast have long since grown cold. She eats it anyway, washing the dryness of it down with a glass of orange juice, and pulls out her laptop.

The journal is sitting just where she left it, carefully nestled into the bottom of her bag.

It’s a project that shouldn’t have taken this long, the transcription of her father’s journal. She can’t look at it for too long, though, can’t read the words and hear his voice in her head for more than a few hours at a time. When she’d finally taken it out of its envelope all those years ago, she’d read it straight through. It was everything he’d ever done, every fact and tidbit of information he’d ever learned. It contained questions, connections, and thoughts on patterns, and shone a light onto the way he thought in a way she’d never had access to before. And then there were the personal touches – sketches of her, of her mother, alongside sigils and incantations and translations of ancient runes.

She hadn’t picked it up for another six months afterward.

It all goes into a database now, into something she can search and cross reference. She’s developed a system, with key words and search terms; she’s grouped things as logically as she can, and saved it all on a remote server. These days, she supplements it with things she’s learned on her own travels, carefully marking off what information comes from her and what information comes from her father’s journal. The archive contains .pdf copies of online newspaper articles, scans of pictures, and passages from books. She’s fairly certain it’s the most complete database of its kind. One day, she’ll give it away. To her ex Mirah, maybe, who is still plugging away at her book and who might sometimes hate Avi’s guts but who always appreciates her information.

Her hands start to hurt if she types for too long, the ache of a broken bone on one side and the sting of sliced skin on the other, so she takes it slowly. There’s nothing else to do here anyway. This is Erika’s world, and she seems content to leave Avi alone while she inhabits it. There’s a comforting quality to the noises from the garage – the clank of tools, the angry rattle of the air ratchet, the occasional call of voices. Trapped as she is, willing broken bones to heal and scattered senses to return, she doesn’t feel confined. It’s an oddly peaceful interlude, made strangely more peaceful by the knowledge that it’s been forced on her. She has nowhere to go, and from what Erika says, her truck is in too many pieces to take her anywhere anyway.

Besides, there’s something tickling at her senses. It’s still out of her reach, but she can see the pattern taking shape. It’s hidden in there somewhere, lost in the sheer mass of information she’s collected over time, just outside of her reach. A name, maybe, or something else that seems to set off chains of events and she knows there’s a catalyst even if she can’t puzzle out what it is.

If there’s one thing she has, though, it’s time. She’s going to find it.

******

It’s her second night out in a row. She should feel guilty, leaving Avi back at the apartment over the garage. After a week and a half, the close contact and lack of entertainment options have made them both easily irritated; they’d spent lunch that day in a terse silence, with Avi finding more interest in her laptop than in conversation. 

She’d come home with $400 in her pocket the night before, a sizably healthy haul from a fairly low rent bar. Now she’s out with Efrain again, three empty shot glasses turned down on the bar in front of her. It’s just enough to begin to take the edge off; she flexes her hand, watching the bones ripple, and wonders if it’s too soon to cut out the stitches.

She turns at the pressure of Efrain’s arm slung low around her waist. “Another?” he asks, already signaling the bartender.

“No more.” It’s been too long, she realizes, smiling at the hint of a slur she hears in her voice. “The object of the game is to earn money, not to piss it away.”

Efrain leans closer. He’s taller than he was that year she spent in Arizona, getting her high school diploma. All her memories are of a lanky, wiry boy with a crooked smile. He’s thicker too, with wide shoulders and a broad chest that narrows down to comparatively narrow hips. He looks good and knows it, and she can only roll her eyes as his hand slides around further so that it’s cupping her hip.

“You have a girlfriend,” she says, wrapping her hand around his wrist and pulling his arm free. “I’m not getting involved in any domestic drama.”

He smirks at her. “Return visits don’t count.”

It’s the kind of thing only he can say to her. Anyone else would catch an elbow to the sternum for their trouble.

He only gets a sigh. “Efrain.”

He pulls his hands away from her and holds them up, palms facing her. “I know,” he says, offering her that sideways grin that had played a large part in her choice all those years ago. It’s charming still, and she hates the way she smiles in return. “We’re friends. No benefits.”

It’s partly her fault. It she had been in the mood to say yes, it wouldn’t be the first time a trip through Phoenix found her revisiting old times with him.

“Tonight’s for making money,” she says, trying to look serious. “There’s no time for foolishness.”

He puts a hand to his heart, pretending to be deeply hurt.

She smiles at him again and thinks about how some people make it easy to be with them while other people make it decidedly more difficult. “You’ll get a kickback for your trouble.”

They start at the pool tables, two old friends catching up. It doesn’t take long for them to strike up a friendly competition with the neighboring table. It’s $25 at first, with the balls racked up in a diamond, 9 ball in the center. One half of the other pair takes the break and sinks a few before leaving a ball short.

Erika finishes running the table.

It is as it always is when playing with guys. First there’s disbelief and then pride enters into it. The boasts become bigger, the competition grows fiercer, and pretty soon, tempers start to flare.

It’s their cue to leave.

The next bar yields another prospect, and soon they’re adding another $125 to the $150 already in their pockets.

She sees a pretty girl at the bar, considers offering to buy her a drink, and doesn’t.

“These guys, they’ve got a card game going in the back,” Efrain says, wrapping an arm around her from behind; he’s familiar enough that it doesn’t startle her, but she stiffens as he slips a beer into her hand and uses the position to whisper in her ear. “It’s big money.”

She turns, puts a hand against his chest to push him back a few inches, and grins up at him. He’s incorrigible but harmless, and part of her appreciates the simplicity of his attraction. She puts on a bad imitation of a 1920s gangster voice and smirks at him. “Are you going to be my lucky charm, doll?”

He shakes his head at her even as he takes a step back. “As if my masculine ego hasn’t already been damaged enough tonight.”

“Come on, now. Flash them that pretty smile so they’ll all be looking at you instead of watching me take all their money.”

He plays along; it’s one of the things she likes best about him. He gives her the very same smile she’s just described and adds a bedroom stare. “Cut me in on your percentage and I’ll sit in your lap and flash’em a little leg, big daddy.”

At that, she laughs and the banter breaks. “Have you been watching Lifetime again?”

He looks wounded. “What? They’re compelling stories of real life drama. I put it on in the lobby for the ladies waiting on their cars.”

“Uh-huh. For the ladies.”

“You going to play cards or not?”

She flashes him a grin of her own. “Yeah. I’m going to play.”

They spend the next three hours around a table in the back. Efrain cashes out early, stinging from his losses, and Erika runs a calculated game of give and take designed to end in her favor. It’s been a long time since she’s played with a partner. It isn’t as if Efrain is in on anything. He doesn’t have the guile and nowhere near enough ruthlessness, but it’s comforting to see him there, sitting just to her left, smiling supportively. It’s good to have him as backup, too, when she folds up the thick wad of bills she’s won and tucks them into her pocket. She’s still in no shape for a fight and the glint in the eyes of a few of her fellow players lets her know they’re calculating the odds of success in getting their money back through more violent means.

“Drinks on me,” she says as they climb back into the cab of his pickup and speed off. She feels the familiar hint of exhilaration that’s always come with winning and getting away with it. It takes her back for a moment, and she almost expects to see her dad grinning at her from behind the wheel.

The image of her dad fizzles away, replaced by Efrain’s teasing grin. “Then I’m drinking from the top shelf.”

Later, as he drops her off, she barely manages to restrain herself from leaning over and kissing him. It’s the kind of night that needs to be topped off with celebration, with something easy and uncomplicated. As much as Efrain teases, she knows that whatever torch he carries for her is a practical one. He knows she’s not looking for forever, and neither is he.

In the end, she climbs out of his truck and waves as his taillights disappear into the distance. He has a girlfriend and she has a problem that doesn’t want to be handled and anyway, sometimes the past is better when it’s a hazy, pleasant memory. That way it never disappoints.

******

The noise pulls Avi from sleep. There’s a crack, a thump, and then another thump followed by a curse, muttered low. She moves on instinct, soundlessly sliding open the drawer of the bedside table. Her hand finds the Colt 1911 easily. It’s loaded, with one already in the chamber, and her thumb slips the safety off even as she slides out of the bed. Her bare feet whisper quietly across the floor; she pauses inside the doorframe, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness, before sliding around just far enough to see into the other room.

Stepping more fully into the doorframe, she sighs, reengages the safety on her pistol, and points the muzzle toward the ground.

“Jesus, Erika,” she says, voice gruff from sleep. “I could have shot you.”

Erika is sitting on the edge of her bed, boots and socks removed. She’s taken off her shirt, too, leaving her in only her bra and the worn, ripped pair of jeans she’d been wearing earlier. They’re unbuttoned and low on her hips, and scuffed fringe at the hem hangs down over her bare feet. Her hair has been pulled back into a messy ponytail, but enough strands have escaped to shade her face.

The door to the storage closet is gaping open; inside it, Avi can barely make out the scatter and spill of boxes and supplies.

There’s a box on the bed, top off. Four small stacks of pocket notepads, each bound around the middle with a rubber band, lay scattered about. The notepads have given in to the pressure of the band over time, and now they’re torqued into a sharp V-shape and Avi wonders how long they’ve been in that box. To the left, there’s a thick stack of rectangular white envelopes, of the kind Avi hasn’t seen since picture taking went digital.

“What are you doing?” she asks a still silent Erika. 

Erika looks up at her with glassy eyes. “It’s just not the same anymore,” she says, and Avi can tell by the way her words blur into one another that she’s drunk.

There’s a picture cradled in Erika’s hands. Avi puts the gun down on the table and walks over to her, gently removing it from her grasp.

In it, a happier, much younger version of Erika looks back at her. The smile on her face is wide and unguarded, big enough so that her eyes are crinkled and her dimples slash dark lines down her cheeks. Her dad has an arm slung around her shoulders, and his smile is so like Erika’s that there’s no denying the relation. There’s just enough detail in the background for her to recognize the building behind them as Javie’s garage, and it’s all so normal and innocent that they could have been anyone. Any family, sharing some placid adventure on an unremarkable summer’s day.

“Are these your Dad’s things?” Avi asks, her tone more gentle than usual. She reaches down for one of the bundles of notepads. The rubber band is dry and cracked, so much so that it snaps under the pressure as she eases up the cover of the first notepad to see the scribbled writing inside.

“It’s pathetic. I’m barely past 30 and already pining after the good old days.” Erika sighs and leans back, bringing her feet up, knees bent, and crossing her arms on top of her head. “It wasn’t always perfect with my Dad. We argued. How could we not, travelling together all the time? But, it was good. We were doing something good together. It’s different by yourself. It’s…” She pauses, eyes following Avi as Avi flicks through the other pictures in the stack Erika has been looking through, and shifts in time from the past to the present. “We do it because we want to help people. We do it because we know there’s no one else who’s going to do it. We do it because it’s who we are. And that’s it really, isn’t it? It’s who we are. You can’t stop being a hunter. You can’t work a day job and lead a normal life. You can’t walk away, not when you know what’s out there.”

Avi’s eyes flick up to meet Erika’s. “No. You can’t.”

“Sometimes I’m not sure it matters. Sometimes I think none of this means anything.” 

Avi puts down the pictures. She rubs a hand over her face and sighs. “You’re drunk. You’re not talking like yourself.”

“Yeah. I’m a little drunk.” Erika laughs bitterly. “I’m a lot lonely. I miss looking forward to what’s going to come next. I’m tired of wishing I was living in the past. Until I ran into you again, my life was... I was getting close to the point where I just didn’t care anymore. But you… you probably never go to sleep thinking about everything you did that day and wondering why it even pays to wake up the next morning if all you’re going to do is do it over again.”

Avi’s been putting the notepads and pictures back into the box. With the bed now clear, she eases the lid back onto it and slides it onto the floor. One hand comes up to her ribs instinctively, though the pain the movement prompts is a dull echo of what it had been when they’d first arrived in Phoenix.   
“Everybody has doubts.” Avi can’t help her smirk. “In my personal experience, you take a moment like this one, rewind a couple of hours, and there’s probably a couple of rounds of tequila to blame.”

“Yeah. Maybe,” Erika agrees with a rueful smile that brings out her dimples. She pauses, head cocked to the side. “It’d be easier with someone else. I could have taken Efrain up on what he was offering or bought a girl a drink and talked her into taking me home, but these days Avi, all I want is you.”

Avi’s taken so off-guard, she’s silent for a long second. “Erika,” she sighs. It’s all she can manage. She’s always worked best when things were hidden away, in shadows and in secret. There’s not much in life she trusts to the scrutiny of daylight.

Erika’s head drops back and her eyes close. The world is unstable in a way that makes her think it might just slip out from underneath her, and she wonders where she’d be left then. “I know.” 

She startles at the sound of Avi’s voice. She didn’t heard her move, but now that she’s focused, she can feel the dip of the mattress just beside her thigh where Avi’s pressed a hand for balance. “I think you got it wrong back then,” Avi says, close and low, and Erika shivers. “You wanted me to remember you forever, but maybe you’re the one who can’t forget.”

Erika’s eyes flutter open just as Avi closes the distance between them. The kiss is soft and sweet, a near perfect echo of the first one they’d shared all those many years ago. Erika’s whimper comes from deep in her chest, and she leans forward even as Avi pulls away.

“Avi,” she says, and her voice is rough in a way that is neither needy nor pleading. It is, instead, demanding.

A light hand on her shoulder stops her. Avi’s smile is faint; her words are soft but firm. “I’m not making any promises, and I’m not talking about this when you’re drunk.”

Erika’s lips twist into a wicked smirk. She tests Avi’s hold on her shoulder and finds it unwavering. “I’m not that drunk.”

“Yeah. You are.” Avi stands slowly. She looks down at Erika for a long moment, but her eyes are hidden in shadow. “Sleep it off, and then get up in the morning and fix my truck. We need to get back on the road.”

Avi’s gruff words settle something inside Erika, and she can’t help but smile. It’s the closest Avi’s come to saying that everything’s going to be all right.

******

Erika doesn’t even look at Avi until she’s downed a glass of orange juice.

“How’s the head?” Avi asks, taking a bite of toast.

“Unhappy.” Erika frowns. “Look, I don’t remember everything I said, but I’m sorry I laid all that stuff on you. Sometimes I…”

Avi’s waves away her concern. Instead, she points to the table, where she’s put the box Erika had pulled out of the supply closet the night before. “Do you mind if I take a look through this? I’d like to check out your dad’s notes.”

Erika looks at the box and blinks, as if she’d forgotten its presence completely. “Sure, but I don’t know what you’ll get out of it,” she says, shrugging. “Dad was always paranoid about someone finding his notes. Most of it’s written in shorthand and code. I can’t read half of it, myself.”

Avi nods, as if she’s agreeing, although Erika doesn’t know with what. “You should drink more water,” she advises.

Despite herself, Erika blushes. “I wasn’t that drunk.”

“That’s what you said then, too, and I’m still not sure I believe it.”

Avi’s face is impassive, her attention divided between her breakfast and the notepads. It allows Erika to examine her furtively, to check for any hint that Avi might actually be referencing the night before. Erika had been drunk, more so than she’s willing to admit, but not drunk enough to forget Avi’s soft kiss or the implied promise of later. She doesn’t know if she was supposed to have forgotten it, though, or if the things that happen in whispers are supposed to stay secret.

She reaches over, steals Avi’s half finished glass of orange juice, and finishes it.

Avi looks up with a frown, a rebuke on the tip of her tongue, but Erika’s acting on impulse. She’s around the table, one hand on it and one hand on the back of Avi’s chair for balance, in a fluid move that belies the pounding in her head. As kisses go, it isn’t perfect, but it isn’t bad either. It lingers just long enough for Avi to know she means it, even if she is being careful with her.

When she pulls away, there’s softness breaking through the distance in Avi’s eyes. It’s the only thing that keeps her from running.

She stands slowly. There’s a nervous smile on her face. Her voice is scratchy, and her heart’s racing.

“I should, uh…” she says, finishing the sentence with a tilt of the head that’s supposed to stand in for shower. She knows what she must look like, jittery and unsure, but she can’t help it. The truth is, she’s both of those and more. “I have to put a rush on this truck. I hear the customer’s getting impatient.”

Avi’s mouth finally breaks into a smile of her own. “It’s okay. She’s got a little time – she can wait.”


	14. Chapter 14

Seven Years Earlier

Erika tilts her head hard to the left. Something cracks loudly, but the tension that lives at the base of her neck doesn’t dissipate. She presses back against her seat, feeling the ripple of vertebra cracking along her back. Their fifteen year old IROC-Z isn’t the most comfortable car in the world, but she’s already explored every square inch of the historically preserved and relocated Pony Express Station and there’s nothing else to do but wait.

She pulls the collar on her jacket up higher, wishes she’d worn a second pair of socks, and sends a death glare her father’s direction. He has his cell phone at one ear and his free hand pressed to the other, trying to hear through the bad connection. It’s so cold his breath fogs; she can tell when he’s speaking and when he’s listening. For the most part, he’s listening.

Early October in Gothenburg, Nebraska, is surprisingly cold.

She’s almost drifted off to sleep when she feels the car shift as her father climbs into the driver’s seat. He has one of his little notepads in his hand, jotting down information in the cryptic shorthand he uses – the one she can only decipher roughly half the time – and the look on his face tells her he’s already planning. She waits until he’s tucked it back in the inside pocket of his jacket before she speaks.

“So?”

He reaches forward to caress the top of the steering wheel. “We’re going to have to stow her away for a while.”

“Where’re we going?”

He grins in anticipation. “That was the Scotsman with a lead on something up in northern Washington. She’s not made for that kind of winter weather.”

His excitement is infectious. “What are we hunting?”

Ricky’s grin turns vicious. “Wendigo.”

The take a detour down I-76 to Denver. They get in around 10:00 that night, have a late dinner, and drive slowly down side streets until they find what they need. It takes Erika less than a minute to pop the hood, use needle-nose pliers to disconnect the fuse powering the car alarm, jimmy open the door, and hotwire the late model 4x4 Isuzu Trooper. Within three minutes, they’re out of the neighborhood and en route to the Denver airport. On the way, they pull into the parking lot of an abandoned gas station, back the cars up trunk to truck, and unload their supplies into the Trooper. They make quick work of it; there’s no light coming from the closed down gas station, and they’re back far enough from the street to be mostly in the shadows, but there’s still traffic.

Her dad drops his car in long-term parking and she picks him up outside of Concourse A. In all, the detour costs them 5 hours, but it’s worth it.

“Same make and model,” he says as he slides into the passenger’s seat, “but the plate’s from Wyoming.”

He pulls a stolen tag out from under his jacket and grins at her. Thirty minutes outside of Denver, they pull off of the road. He holds the small LED flashlight while she changes the plates; once the old one is wiped down, she tosses it deep into the brush alongside the road. They’ll change it again, once they cross over into Wyoming, if they can find another late model Trooper.

They stop for the night in Boulder. It’s after midnight, and they have nearly eighteen hours of driving ahead of them until they reach their destination. After a quick breakfast, they’re on the road again by 8:00. Ricky takes the first shift, and it’s not long before Erika’s asleep again, stretched out across the backseat. She finds a blanket in the back; it’s plaid flannel, probably used for picnics in the park, and if she wasn’t forced to curl up on the seat, it probably wouldn’t be long enough to cover both her chest and her feet at the same time. 

She’s finally awake a few hours later, watching the flat land roll past. They spend long minutes passing by open, vacant stretches of land. In the distance, there are occasional groupings of boxy, squat buildings – barns and stables, by the look of them, with houses offset behind them. In the far distance, mountains loom, rocky and bare.

I-25 takes them up through Cheyenne, Wyoming, and into Casper, where they stop for lunch.

Ricky chooses a steakhouse with parking in the back, and they luck into the Trooper they’ve been scouting. Erika keeps watch while Ricky switches the plates and she’s amazed, as always, how quickly and easily someone can do something like this. It’s an open space, broad daylight, and yet there’s no hue and cry, no pointing of fingers and shouts of, “Thief!” He doesn’t get his steak – it’s not prudent to stay there, not when the owner of the other SUV might come out and notice the switch – but it doesn’t matter. They’re two plates away from the original boost. If anyone decides to invest the time and interest, they can still get jammed up, but the chances are low.

They’re in Missoula, Montana, just outside of the Lolo National Forest, by ten that night. Dinner is fast food, the motel is cheap, and they’re asleep by midnight.

A little after noon the next day, they pull into Colville, Washington, so far north another 45 minutes would put them in Canada. It’s not as cold as Erika would have expected, not this late in the year and this close to the Canadian border. Still, she shoves her gloved hands into the pocket of her thick, lined jacket as soon as they’re out of the Trooper. There are mountains in the distance, patches of white snow visible through breaks between thick clusters of evergreens, and just the sight of it makes her shiver.

It’s a little blip of a town, tucked into a valley between distant mountains. Main Street is a row of one and two story buildings dotted with squat evergreens, and everything is so straight and flat that she can see the undeveloped land stretching out past the outskirts of town. At the city center, just to the left of the police station, a clocktower juts out of the median. Atop it, an eagle is coming in for a landing, claws outstretched. At the bottom, there’s a ring of three pioneer men, one dressed for the hunt and two for prospecting.

If forced to say something nice, Erika would probably describe it as quaint.

There are only three places to stay in town; for once, instead of the motel, Ricky decides to check them into a couple of rooms at the local inn. He offers up a credit card, signs in as Michael Knight, and accepts their room keys with a smile.

“CPB or PBS?” he asks her. They have side-by-side rooms, another rare luxury. After all of the time spent in the car, Erika is more than ready to get started. She’s used to the rhythm of their life; the lulls of inactivity are usually longer than the bursts of activity, but she’s always invigorated by the start of each new hunt.

She considers it for a moment. “PBS,” she says finally. “Out of the Seattle office.”

PBS is a lot like FBI, at least when it comes to costuming. She pulls out her tailored charcoal business suit, stolen from a lawyer who took her home in Dallas. The jacket and skirt are fitted; if they were going out as FBI, she’d go with a white button down. PBS is a little softer. It’s pale pink, and instead of pulling her hair up in a bun, she opts for a ponytail. The black, rectangular glasses are the same, but where FBI gets clear lip gloss, PBS gets a hint of color. She adds a small black purse and a black leather binder, the latter liberated from a passenger on the MBTA in Boston. She’s the business end of things. Her father, as producer, gets away with khakis and a white button down under his thick winter coat.

The Colville Public Library is a one-story brick building. Windows line the front at equal intervals, two feet between each, and concrete steps lead up to a covered porch. The doors are wooden, red with rows of glass panes. It’s set just off the road, behind a sign announcing its presence buried amid local foliage. Without close attention, it could easily be mistaken for a schoolhouse.

Inside, a pair of librarians works the front desk. Another has a push cart laden with books, each of which she slots into place with meticulous precision. A bank of four public access computers hosts two patrons, and a mother leads a child by the hand through the short shelves of the children’s section.

They approach the pair at the desk.

“Good afternoon,” Erika says, extending her hand to each of the women in turn. “My name is Erin Roman. I’m a consultant with the Seattle office of the Public Broadcasting Service. This is Michael Knight, one of my directors.”

The younger of the two answers her first, her response the prim and proper reply of a small town librarian. “Good afternoon. I’m Lucy Adamson.”

The other chimes in with, “Nancy Lugenbeel. Good to have you.”

Nancy is the picture of a small town librarian: orange turtleneck, black velvet quilted vest with its Halloween-themed embroidery, bright silver hair in a short approximation of a pixie cut, and bifocals perched on the tip of her nose. Lucy, on the other hand, has big green eyes, jet black hair scraped back in a long, unforgiving ponytail, and a shy, closed-mouth smile that catches and holds Erika’s interest. Her own smile widens in response, and she’s on the verge of leaning against the counter and exploring the effectiveness of her wiles when a discreet cough from behind her brings her back on task.

“How can we help you?” Nancy asks, all officious courtesy.

Erika steps closer, careful to keep her voice low in deference to the setting. Her tone is familiar, but confident. “I produce documentary specials on spec for broadcast on PBS. You may have seen some of my work. That thing on the Salem witch trials?” She pauses, looking at them expectantly, and Lucy gives a tentative nod. “Good. I’m starting a new project, actually. This time, I’m looking to do something a little more local. We’ve been touring the area looking for a place with the right feel. I have to say, from what I can tell, Colville looks perfect for what I have in mind.”

Nancy looks slightly more interested than she had the moment before. “Which is?”

Now, Erika’s voice turns conspiratorial. “You see, what I want to do is pick a town in each area of the state. A place that really symbolizes the area. Once we find our towns, I want to run down a complete history on all of them, starting with when they were settled and carrying through to the present day. I’d like to chronicle the different phases of their development, and find out what it takes for a settlement to turn into a successful, thriving town like the one you have here.”

She’s not sure which part of the pitch brings Nancy on-board, but by the time she’s finished, Nancy’s eyes are nearly glittering with excitement.

“Of course,” Erika continues, “we really need to dig into the history of the town. I’ve always thought the best place to start was right here, at the local library. Do you happen to archive any of the town’s historical documents? Are there people in town you’d recommend we speak with? Who here really knows Colville?”

Her voice is slipping from confidential to seductive, but she can’t help it. Lucy’s tiny little smile keeps growing wider. In the end, though, it’s Nancy who blushes.

“Well,” she says, pulling off her bifocals with a sense of self-effacing modesty, “I do consider myself something of a local historian.”

Erika’s smile falters slightly. She can almost hear the smirk in her dad’s voice as he gives her a gentle push forward. “Perfect. You two should talk further. Local history is really Erin’s specialty. I’m better with the visuals. Photos, documents, that sort of thing. Lucy, maybe you could show me around the library?”

Erika turns to him casually. Her reassuring smile slips into a furious scowl only he can see, but his answering, amused smile only widens in reply. She tries narrowing her eyes and tilting her head discretely, a clear signal that they should reverse roles, that she should take Lucy and he should go with Nancy, but a small shake of his head shuts her down.

Minutes later, her father follows along after Lucy with a parting smirk in her direction, off to find the small section on Colville’s history, while Erika trails sadly along behind Nancy to an office in the back.

It’s a full ninety minutes later before she extracts herself from Nancy’s clutches. She’s learned more about Colville than can possibly be good for her health. Nancy had started in the mid-1800s and moved forward with a pace not unlike that which time itself had traveled, and so Erika now possesses an abundance of knowledge about the apparently delicate nature of frontier economies and what, exactly, can happen when miners, the military, and local American Indian tribes end up in a dispute.

“You’ve got fur traders, prospectors, farmers, people in the timber industry,” Erika lists off before downing a fourth of her pint of draft beer. “There are soldiers, local Indian tribes, freighters, miners, homesteaders. Hell, fucking French Canadians.”

At her father’s look of disapproval, she rolls her eyes.

“A Canuck of the francophone variety. That better?”

Ricky gives an exaggerated sigh. “Not really.”

Erika takes another deep drink before continuing. “This whole place started off somewhere else. They had a Fort, I don’t know… somewhere in the region. It was your basic West coast free-for-all out here. Someone finds gold and every schmuck with a pickaxe is on the next wagon train over. Treaties get broken, people start fighting, and the military gets called in to subdue whoever can’t afford to bribe them off. When things get settled down, the Fort gets closed and the surrounding town starts to die. Families and businesses packed up and moved over to Colville. Then they open things up between them and the mines up in British Columbia, put in a railroad and build roads, and you have people coming and going all the time.”

“That’s a lot of opportunities for getting lost.”

Erika’s taken off her PBS clothes and exchanged them for something more comfortable and less out of place. She’s in jeans and a black thermal shirt now, with thick-soled boots instead of heels.

“Lucy was lovely, by the way. Single too,” he adds, barely able to stifle a grin at Erika’s glare. He lets the moment stretch out, enjoying her irritation at having her romantic intentions thwarted, before turning serious. “She let me use one of their computers. In the last five years, they’ve lost twenty hikers who were never found.”

Erika’s thoughts shift away from the pretty librarian and back to the hunt. “And nobody’s worried?”

“The National Forest alone is over a million acres. You have the lake there too, and the wildlife refuge.”

Erika frowns, doing the math in her head. “I don’t know. I might expect those kinds of numbers from Yellowstone, but it’s maybe three times as big.”

“There are always a couple of your regular deaths. Falls. Drowning. Maybe the pattern got lost.” Ricky taps his finger against the side of his beer bottle. He stares off into the distance for a moment, lost in thought. “Or maybe no one was paying enough attention to notice it.”

Erika shakes her head, unconvinced. “You don’t have twenty disappearances in five years and not notice.”

When Ricky looks up at her, his eyes are as flat as his voice. “Not unless you’re used to it.”

“So there’s enough to this tip to make it worthwhile.” Erika sits back against her chair. Someone puts a quarter into the jukebox and CCR forces her to lean forward again, saying with more volume, “That’s a lot of land to cover.”

Ricky’s mouth tightens as he considers it. “Somebody has to know more. We have the forestry service, search and rescue, the local PD. Somebody goes missing and somebody else has to look for them. Some of those deaths were locals. The family has to know where they liked to hike.”

“We should see if there are local guides.”

A waitress drifts past, empty glasses in each hand, and Ricky holds up two fingers even as he nods at Erika’s suggestion. He’s about to speak again when something catches his eye, and his grin returns. “Well, will you look at that,” he chuckles, his gaze landing just over Erika’s left shoulder.

Hovering by the bar, hands clasped nervously in front of her, is Lucy.

“I’ve got this,” Erika says, slipping out of her chair. She gives Ricky a significant look. “You stay here.”

******

Because Lucy’s expression brightens when she see Erika walking toward her, Erika feels it’s safe to lead off with, “Can I buy you a drink?”

She finds Lucy’s flustered blush adorable. “I… no. No thank you.”

“Are you waiting on someone? Can I keep you company?”

The prospect that Lucy hasn’t really tracked her down and that she might, instead, actually be meeting someone at the bar hits Erika in the awkward silence that follows. Lucy looks like she’s struggling with something, and Erika begins to think she’s coming up with a polite, librarianish way of letting her down gently because it takes a long moment for Lucy to gather herself together enough to blurt out, “I want to know what you really want.”

She’s left unsure of exactly how to answer.

“I looked you up,” Lucy continues, looking intently at Erika and then looking away in rapid cycle, “on the internet. There are plenty of documentaries on the Salem witch trials, but none by anyone named Erin Roman. And, there are a lot of Erin Romans, but none of them are you.” She pauses for a moment, and her gaze flits over to where Ricky is sitting, watching them with amused interest. She almost looks apologetic as she adds, “And it turns out that Michael Knight was the name of the character David Hasslehoff played in Knight Rider.” 

At Erika’s stunned silence, she adds softly, “I don’t think you were telling us the truth.”

It’s not the first time their cover’s been blown, Erika notes, but perhaps the first time it’s been blown so politely.

“Let me buy you a drink,” she says again, voice strained.

Again, Lucy defers.

“Dinner, then. There’s got to be a diner somewhere in this town.”

Lucy looks at her hesitantly, and Erika considers the notion that Lucy might think she’s some sort of psychopathic killer in addition to simply being a liar.

“Somewhere very public.” Erika gives her a reassuring smile. “You don’t have anything to worry about. I promise.”

It’s not a 24 hour place. There are no 24 hour places in Colville. The locals eat dinner by nine or they make it at home. Erika’s on the verge of ordering chicken-fried steak but there’s something about the way Lucy is watching her that prompts her to go with the vegetable plate instead. The smile she gets makes the choice worth it.

“So you’re right,” Erika says once the waitress is gone. “We lied to you.”

Lucy’s eyes are so pale of a green that they’re nearly transparent. It’s almost unnerving to have them fixed on her with such intensity.

“Who are you?” Lucy is fretting nervously with her napkin, tearing the edges into strips. “What do you want with us? Why did you lie?”

It takes Erika several seconds to organize her thoughts, to pick through what parts of the truth she can share and what parts she can’t. “My Dad and I… we’re like problem solvers.” When Lucy recoils, she decides that what she’d thought was a delicate way of putting things has been, instead, somehow horrifying.

“You kill people?” Lucy’s eyes go wide. She’s reached for her fork and is clutching it tightly, and Erika nearly lurches across the table to cover her hand before Lucy decides to go on the offensive.

“What? No.” She loosens her grip on Lucy’s hand in an attempt to seem less intimidating. “Nothing like that, I swear. Please don’t stab me with your fork.”

“So that man is your father,” Lucy says, still keeping a firm grip on her fork.

Erika nods. “We’re the detective kind of problem solvers,” she says, realizing belatedly that Lucy has quite possibly read too many noir novels. “We’re here investigating the hiker deaths.” She pauses for a moment and glances down at Lucy’s hand. “This fork thing is really making me nervous.”

Lucy unconsciously puts down the fork, and stares at Erika in confusion. “Hiker deaths?”

Glad to have averted impalement by tine, Erika nods. “Haven’t you noticed that an abnormally high number of hikers get lost in the forest? Hikers that are never found?”

“Why would you go through all of this trouble just to find out about hikers?” Lucy is eyeing her warily, clearly baffled. Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail; she’s wearing a cable-knit turtleneck and minimal make-up, and now that Erika doesn’t have to worry about the threat of being stabbed by an eating implement, she’s once again free to appreciate the other woman’s understated beauty. “Wouldn’t it have been easier to just ask?”

Erika knows it’s never easier to just ask. When television producers start asking about local history, people feel flattered. When tourists start probing town secrets, people feel threatened. Misdirection and trickery are what keep them from getting entangled with law enforcement.

“I’m sorry we misled you,” Erika says instead of answering. She employs the same smile she used earlier that afternoon in the library, flirtatious and a little seductive. “We thought it was the best way to get information.”

The smile seems to work. Lucy softens, relaxes. They’re interrupted by the waitress’ return, and by the time they’re alone again, the tension between them has eased. Erika leans forward, her tone low and confidential. “I don’t want to lie to you. My name is Erika, not Erin, and we could really use your help.”

No longer afraid that she’s been targeted by a serial killer, Lucy is back to looking intrigued, interested, and tentatively receptive.

Half an hour later, Erika’s pulling out enough money to cover the check when Lucy says, “My brother knows the forest really well. During the summer months, he does organized tours.”

Erika’s attention is instantly caught. “Why just the summer?”

She hasn’t shared their theory with Lucy, that there’s at least one, if not more, wendigo in the area surviving on the occasional stray hiker. She has, instead, confessed that she and her father are writing a book about the dangers of various national parks. Secrecy is key, she’d stressed, because of the threat that such an expose poses. It’s not that they want to cause harm. They’re aware that a lot of local economies survive on the revenue generated by entertaining the people who flock to such natural attractions, but they have two main purposes, both of which involve improving federal standards and federal funding. It’s a cause Lucy finds noble.

“He’s a teacher. The rest of the year, he’s in school.”

“You think he’d be willing to take us out there?”

“This isn’t exactly the best time of the year for hiking,” Lucy notes as they slide out of the booth. “And anyway, if what you say is true and more people than usual die in the forest, maybe I don’t want him going out there at all.”

It’s turned decidedly colder while they were inside. Erika’s coat is too thin, and she starts to shiver almost immediately. “Maybe he’d be willing to share his maps,” she says, zipping it all the way up to the top. “It would help to talk to someone who knows the terrain.”

It doesn’t take long before they’re at Lucy’s car. She’s watching Erika shyly, with a hint of something wistful. Erika’s always been a fan of the adage claiming nothing ventured, nothing gained, and so she moves quickly. It doesn’t take much to close the space between them; before Lucy even has time to voice her surprise, Erika is kissing her.

It’s somehow even sweeter than Erika had anticipated. Lucy gasps against her. She grabs hold of the lapels on Erika’s jacket and holds on tight. When Erika pulls away, Lucy’s eyes are still closed and her lips still parted, so she kisses her again.

“It’s cold out,” Erika says finally. She’s kissed her way over to Lucy’s ear and the words, spoken directly again skin, elicit a shiver.

“I’ve never done anything like this,” Lucy admits breathlessly, but there’s an edge of excitement to her voice.

Erika presses another kiss to her cheek. “Why don’t you invite me home for a cup of cocoa?”

Lucy pulls back and looks away shyly.

“Hey,” Erika says, sliding her hands down Lucy’s arms and twining their fingers together, “saying yes isn’t making any promises.”

When Lucy looks back at her, her smile is still shy. She nods her head nonetheless.

******

Erika is sneaking back into her room just as her father walks out of his.

He takes one look at her, sighs, and shakes his head. “It’s better for me when I don’t know these things. I know you’re an adult, but it still feels like bad parenting. It would make me happier if you could do a better job of being stealthy.”

And she would have been, Erika wants to protest, but Lucy cooked breakfast.

“The librarian?” he asks.

Erika shoots him a look that strongly implies ‘who else?’, but instead of saying that, offers, “Her brother knows the forest. In the summer, he leads tours.”

“Oh, that’s great. Now it won’t be awkward at all when we go to talk to him.”

“Our legend’s changed. She busted the other one.”

“And yet the day can still improve.”

Erika shrugs. “It had to be done. We’re now crusading investigative journalists, out to expose the parks service for its cover-up of the dangers of national forests. She’s going to talk to her brother and see if he’d be willing to take us out.”

A frown flickers across Ricky’s face. “I’m not fond of civilian involvement.”

“Recon only.” Erika pushes open the door to her room, holding back a sigh. She’s tired. She understands her Dad’s frustration. It’s never good, bringing a non-hunter in on a hunt, but the national forest is huge and winter is already firmly ensconced. They could do this on their own, but they don’t have the time. “We let him show us, and then we go back on our own. It’s better than getting lost in the snow.”

She can tell he doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t protest further. “I’ll meet you in the lobby in an hour. We have work to do.”

******

She doesn’t even bother sneaking back into her hotel room the next morning. It had started snowing the night before, and it’s too tempting to stay tucked into Lucy’s nice warm bed, with Lucy nice and warm beside her. She likes the way Lucy smiles at her – it’s half a smile, with her teeth biting into her lower lip in a way that makes her look both shy and mischievous all at once. It’s the kind of morning that should start off by going right back to bed, but Lucy slips out of her grasp and into the shower.

“Work,” she says apologetically, and Erika remembers something she’d momentarily been able to forget.

Work.

She spends the day with her dad and a stack of newspaper articles he’d printed off at the library while she’d been on the receiving end of a history lesson from Nancy Lugenbeel. They purchase trail maps from one of the town’s gas stations, but it’s hard, putting together the little information included in the articles with actual, physical locations. Many of the deaths received only the briefest of mentions, and by mid-afternoon, they’re only reasonably confident they’ve mapped five out of the twenty incidents. As best they can tell, there’s a loose pattern centered just southeast of a little bend in the Pend Orielle River.

When Lucy calls her cell soon after she and her father have taken a break, vision blurry from staring at the map for so long, Erika tries not to blush at the look her dad gives her. She steps outside, her voice a whisper in the hotel’s hallway, and listens with a broadening smile as Lucy invites them both over for dinner that night to meet her brother.

“If you wanted to ask him any questions, that is,” she’s saying, and Erika’s imagining a hint of blush limning her cheeks.

She sounds entirely too truthful when she breaks in to say, “I’d like that.”

The part that she’s consciously tried to avoid considering is just how awkward it’s going to be, the four of them sitting down to dinner together. She doesn’t know what Lucy’s told her brother, but she knows her dad knows just exactly what’s going on. He can play it like he doesn’t, she knows he can, but she thinks that might be even more strained than if he didn’t.

They show up at 6:30 with a bottle of wine, and Erika sees the blush she imagined earlier. Lucy is the nervous hostess, inviting them in and taking their coats, and it’s the most normal Erika has felt in a while. She didn’t have this growing up. She’d never had to introduce someone to her dad, or her dad to someone. That wasn’t the way it worked when you were going to be gone before dawn.

Lucy’s brother Rob has an easy smile; he’s tall and rangy, with his sister’s hair and eyes. Erika looks at him and can’t help her blush. She doesn’t usually stick around long enough to meet the family – Rob’s not looking at her with anything other than friendly greeting, pumping her hand enthusiastically, but she can’t bring herself to meet his eyes.

As soon as this wendigo is killed, she’ll be gone. It’s their standard operating procedure. They don’t stick around, never have, and especially not after neutralizing some kind of supernatural threat. It’s the best way to get on someone’s radar, and there’s nothing worse for business than attention. That means leaving Lucy. Disappearing, probably, because she’s never been good at good-byes, and that’s going to be a total asshole move. She likes Lucy. She likes cold mornings together under the blanket, and a girl who would probably make her chicken noodle soup if she was sick and cry silently and reach for her hand at sad movies. The kind of girl who could be a girlfriend, if Erika was the kind of girl who could have one.

It puts a sudden and severe damper on her mood.

Rob’s talking animatedly to her dad. Erika is only paying attention to snippets, but it sounds like Rob has bitten into the story she’d given Lucy and has bitten hard. He’s talking about trails in need of repair, understaffing in critical capacities, and higher traffic volumes in the past few peak seasons. 

“Do you need any help?” she asks Lucy, following her into the kitchen. Lucy gives her a sly look before reaching up to kiss her softly, and Erika wraps her arms around Lucy’s waist in a grip too hard for the ordinariness of the moment.

“I thought about you today,” Lucy says, whispering it like a secret. “I know it’s ridiculous. I know we just met, but…” She shrugs helplessly. “Nothing ever happens here, and then you came along. I’m not acting like myself.”

Erika wants to tell her that she’s not acting like herself, either, but she can hear her dad on the other side of the door. He’s spinning out the story, bringing Rob in even deeper, and thinking that this was in any way different would be a lie. They’re going to finish the job and leave, just like always, and the girl she’s holding in her arms doesn’t know her at all. She knows the lies Erika has told her, and the deception leaves a sour taste on her tongue.

She kisses Lucy back, because that’s not a lie.

Over dessert, they pull out the map. Rob frowns down at it, tracing his fingers over the little black X’s they marked earlier. “I don’t know,” he says. “This is pretty far out. People usually access the Pend Orielle down by Newport, where it’s easier. If your hikers were out here, they were probably pretty advanced. It’s not that far. We could drive over to Ione and set out from there, but the trails aren’t well used and the terrain’s rough. It’s thick pine, steep in places, and the river’s in a canyon. I can see where it would be easy to get lost.”

Ricky looks discouraged, even though Erika knows that nothing Rob has said has even remotely changed his mind. “Maybe you could just sketch out some trails for us, then,” he says, and Erika can almost see what’s going to happen next before it plays out before her.

“I don’t think you should go up there alone.” Rob frowns, looking from Ricky to Erika. “It’s a bit north of here, and there’s bound to be plenty of snow on the ground. It’s easy to get lost if you’re not used to hiking in the snow.”

She avoids her dad’s eyes. She knows he’s looking at her, waiting for her to chime in and play out her role in this little game, but she can’t bring herself to do it. He’s going to have to carry this one all on his own.

“We’ll be fine,” he says finally, voice full of false confidence. “We just want to take a look around. We’ll make sure we don’t wander too far.”

She can almost feel Lucy stiffen beside her. “Rob…”

“It’d be best if I went with you.” Rob shakes his head, giving in. “We’ll need to leave early. I want to make sure we’re out and back before dark. I wouldn’t want to be out in the woods after the sun goes down, not with you two. No offense, but an overnight at this time of year is best left to those with experience.”

Erika has no more desire to be out in the woods past dark than Rob does, so she doesn’t take it as a slight. As much as anyone else, she likes warmth, a comfortable bed, and a night reasonably free of danger.

“Bright and early,” Ricky says, an easy smile on his face. He reaches over, grinning at Lucy as he takes another piece of apple pie. “We’re fine with that.”

******

She hates it when they have to deceive someone so unassumingly earnest, and so she lingers at the car, examining the contents of the trunk as if she has to make a critical decision over what to bring with them. They’d met up with Rob in front of Lucy’s house before daybreak that morning. Erika had spent the night alone, not quite able to bring herself to stay despite the look in Lucy’s eyes which clearly indicated that she was invited to do so. It didn’t feel right, not when they were going to be going out into the forest the next morning, one step closer to the culmination of this hunt.

Finally, she closes the rear hatch on the Trooper; Rob’s excited chatter trails off as she approaches, a rifle in each hand. She keeps the practically new Kimber 84M; her dad prefers his well worn Winchester Model 70. Rob watches, dumbfounded, as they strap them onto their backs, and Erika wonders how well he’s going to process investigative journalists who come armed. He looks at them, looking back at him expectantly, and he’s clearly hesitant, on the verge of balking.

She just wants to get started. She feels impatient, suddenly, thinking about Lucy and her perfectly nice brother Rob, and about how she’s going to run away.

“It’s bear season,” she says, readjusting the rifle strap crossing over her chest, “and I hear there are puma out here. We’re not interested in bringing any down, but if we happen to get in trouble, we want to be ready.”

Ricky smiles at him. “It’s just a precaution, son.”

He doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t press the issue. Erika pulls the zipper on her thick winter jacket up to the base of her neck. She has a double shoulder harness on underneath, a Colt 1911 on each side, and an iron hunting knife secured at the small of her back. She doesn’t think Rob is observant enough to notice, which is probably for the best.

They’re not the first group out on the trail. Footsteps have turned the five inches of snow to mud and slush at the base, and as they move further up, she can see a row of orderly tracks headed up and a sparser trail headed back down. Rob doesn’t even seem to notice the cold, but Erika pulls her scarf up so that it covers her mouth. She’s wearing a white watch cap, which she pulls down lower over her ears. She’s fallen behind a little, more than happy to let her dad keep up the conversation with Rob. Sometimes, this part is easier for him than it is for her. She can flirt and charm and lie on command, but there are times when it’s more of an effort for her than it ever seems to be for him.

Two hours later, there’s a sharp wind blowing out of the north, and snow has started to fall, soft and lazy. They’re at a higher altitude and closer to the border; her nose burns as she breathes in frigid air, and she pulls her scarf up even higher to cover it. The snow is starting to crunch under their boots now, a naturally thicker covering that hardly ever melts up this high, and Erika notices that there’s now only a single trail of footsteps covering the ground in front of them, with nothing going back. They haven’t seen another hiker yet, and she doesn’t know if the returning footsteps she saw earlier belonged to hikers who doubled back before they even started down the trail, or if they’d branched off at some point. Whoever is in front of them is soldiering on, from the looks of it. From the way snow is settling into the deep tracks left by their boots, they have a decent head-start on her own little party.

Her feet are starting to go numb in her boots, despite the layers of socks, when Rob draws to a halt.

“I think we should turn around,” he says, looking up to the sky. The snow isn’t falling any heavier, but it’s still falling. It’s relatively dark where they are; the pine trees are thick and full, with wide, heavy boughs, and the sun is partially hidden behind a bank of clouds. It’s deathly silent aside from the sound of their own slightly strained breathing and the rustle of the wind, and she feels exposed and vulnerable in a way that has her touching the rifle strap across her chest in reassurance.

“Just a little bit more,” Ricky says, nodding up the trail. “I don’t think we’ve gone out far enough to reach the places marked on the map.”

They have to be miles out. They’ve been hiking for hours, and even though the terrain is rough, they’ve made decent time. She can see from the tightening of Rob’s lips that he’s not happy, but when Ricky strides off decisively, he follows.

Ten minutes later, they come upon something that stops them in their tracks. In front of them, the snow is churned, the ground visible in places where it’s been kicked aside entirely. Alongside the trail, branches have been snapped from two large pines, and there are scrapes in the bark of another. It’s clear that something’s happened, that there’s been a fight or skirmish of some kind, and Rob starts to back away instinctively.

“We need to go,” he says, a hint of panic in his voice. “We have to get back, get a ranger. Something’s happened here. Something bad. A bear, maybe, or… or…”

Ricky walks over to one of the trees, paying Rob’s rambling no mind. He takes a look at the broken branches, at the scrapes in the bark. He bends, looking at a mark in the snow, and motions Erika over to him.

“Here,” he says, tracing a finger around the lip of a footprint. It’s not a boot. It’s bigger, and the shape isn’t right; it’s been a long time since Erika’s seen anything like it, but she knows what it is. She has her rifle in hand in one seamless move, following Ricky as he follows the trail. The footprints are spaced wide, at least three feet between each, and she brings her rifle up to her shoulder so she can use the scope to scan the terrain in front of them.

Rob’s still behind them, still asking questions. She can hear the nervous tremor in his voice, but she’s not paying attention to his words. Her focus has narrowed down to the sweep of forest as she scans through her scope, following an unmistakable trail. She sees bits of cloth and the red of blood against the white of a broken branch. Beyond that, the blood seeps into the snow. The drops are small, the trail barely visible as it disappears over the crest of a hill, but they have a direction.

“There,” she says, pointing, but her dad is already moving. She unzips her jacket, because she’s better with a pistol at close range, although she hopes she’ll be putting a bullet through this wendigo’s eye from 100 yards away.

“What are you… where are you…”

When she turns to Rob, his eyes are wide with terror. “Go back,” she says. “Run. Don’t stop. Don’t turn around. Run as fast as you can. Do you understand?”

“What’s going on?”

She doesn’t have time for this. Her dad is already almost at the crest of the hill, and she doesn’t want to lose him. “If you stay here, you’re in a great deal of danger. Run, Rob. Don’t come back, no matter what you hear.”

There’s no more time to be spent with him. She has to go after her dad, has to make sure she’s there to have his back. She slings the rifle over her shoulder and takes off at a sprint, ducking through the pines as she follows her dad’s tracks up the hill. She hits the top at a dead run; the other side slopes more steeply than the one she’s just climbed, and when she tries to stop, her feet slip out from under her. Before she can stop her momentum, she’s sliding down the steep hillside, trees whipping past her. She kicks futilely with her feet, unable to gain purchase against the slick snow. There’s a small stream at the bottom of the hill, surrounded on both sides by a rocky shore. There’s already a thin layer of ice crusting at the banks, and she knows that if she slides into it, she’ll be wet through to the bone.

She’s already bracing for impact when she sees the tree ahead. She’s too far away from the trunk to grab hold, but there’s a thick branch low to the ground, heavy with needles. The impact nearly pulls her arm from its socket when she grabs hold with one hand, her body pulling forcefully to the side. She skids around on her back, nearly loses her grasp, and slams painfully into a large rock which had been hidden from view. It’s hard enough to nearly knock the wind from her, and for a second, she lays there, panting, blinking up at the sky as snowflakes fall to melt on her face.

Even though her mind is fuzzy, she knows she doesn’t have the luxury of rest. One hand on her aching side, she struggles to her feet, trying to catch her bearings. She has no idea which way her dad has gone, if he’d cut along the ridge or if he’d come downhill. The wide trail she left in her wake would have wiped away any tracks. Nothing picks up on the other side of the river, and if he’d come this way, then he would have left a path of his own along the bank.

There’s nothing to do but climb the hill and see if she can trace his steps. She considers going left, where the ridge above trails down to the streambed, but there’s no guarantee that he came that way. If he had, then she’s likely to catch up with him in a fraction of the time. If he didn’t, then she’ll have to double back up the ridge to link back up with his tracks.

The climb is steep, and she slips more than once. In the end, she nearly has to pull herself up hand over hand using tree branches, and more time passes than she feels comfortable with before she reaches the top of the ridge. When she finally pulls herself up over the edge and straightens, panting and scanning the ground around her for clues, the snow is picking up, making it harder to see. Her own flailing descent turned the ground just above the ridge into a mess of snow, and she almost misses the footsteps cutting sharply back into the forest. Side still aching, she slides her rifle off of her shoulder to hold before her before following.

The trail leads deeper into the forest. The trees grow thick and dense around her, and with the snow and the clouds, the path in front of her is dark and treacherous. She has to pull free her small, powerful flashlight, its light almost blue against the white of the snow. The signs are more obvious here among the thick trees, broken branches and the occasional smear of bloody snow. She’s breathing hard, both from exertion and from panicked desperation, the sound unnaturally loud in the stillness. There’s no way to tell how far ahead of her her dad might be, and she curses internally. It’s not a good idea, hunting wendigo alone. They’re lightening quick, stronger than even the strongest human, and intimately familiar with the terrain around their home base. They were at a disadvantage even before being separated, and she begins to feel dread pool in her belly.

A sudden, panicked scream in the distance echoes through the trees, and Erika’s heart begins to race. It sounded like it came from behind her, but she can’t tell. They’re in the mountains, and sound travels in odd ways through the trees. Her dad or Rob? There’s no way to know. She can’t turn around now. If she turns now, she’s backtracking, losing time. But what if they were being led in circles? If so, the shortest way to the place she needs to be might be behind her. Maybe the wendigo doesn’t know she’s there. Maybe she’ll be able to surprise it.

Maybe it’s trying to lure her into a trap.

She has to go forward. It’s the only way. The monster came this way, no doubt about it, and so did her father. She can tell by the boot prints in the snow. She has to stay disciplined, to track the way she’s been taught to track.

The deeper she goes, the harder the snow seems to fall. It’s getting more and more difficult to see the trail in front of her, but she quickens her pace, feeling the pressure of time lost. She’s almost running now, heedless of the slick, snow covered pine needles under her feet. There’s no time to waste. The longer she hunts, the greater her disadvantage. She doesn’t know the area. She’s already hopelessly lost, no way for her to go now but forward, even if she’d wanted to turn back.

There’s a loud crack somewhere in the distance, and she brings her rifle to her shoulder instinctively. She can’t tell how far away the noise was, and considers yelling for her father. It’s an unconscionable breach of her position, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe she’s already being hunted herself, and they would be stronger together. She opens her mouth to scream when there’s another loud crack, closer by. This time, she instinctively drops into a crouch, ducking off of the trail and behind a tree. She’s still breathing hard, each harsh pant leaving a cloud of trailing mist, and she strains to hear over the sound. The forest is eerily silent again, nothing but the wet rustle of snow. It’s obscuring the trail more quickly now, and she knows that if she doesn’t keep moving, she’s going to be stranded.

She steps back out onto the trail, still in a crouch. The air is heavy around her, and she blinks as snowflakes land on her lashes, obscuring her vision. Her fingers are frozen and stiff inside her gloves; she flexes her hands, knowing that she’s going to need to be ready to shoot on a moment’s notice if she catches sight of the wendigo.

The stillness is starting to play tricks on her mind. She’s straining for any hint of noise, anything, but there’s only the crunch of snow beneath her boots, the rasp of her breath, the loud pounding of her heart. The trail has to lead somewhere. She knows it does, because she’s following behind the monster and the monster has prey. If it was just been the wendigo, then it would be more likely that she was caught in a trap, that the monster was circling back on her from behind, but if it had prey, it was taking it to ground. There has to be something somewhere, some place it called home. Some place it stores its food.

Where was her father? How could he have gotten so far in front of her? They’d had hunts go bad before, but they’d always been together. Now he was alone and she was alone, and that’s the easiest way to get dead.

She would have passed by the entrance to the cave if she hadn’t heard the moan. She nearly jumps out of her skin at the sound, low and pained, and her rifle comes up to her shoulder on instinct. The trail continues on in front of her, but she can’t leave it, can’t continue on without investigating. To her left, through thick underbrush and barely visible, the ground slopes downward. She follows the memory of the moan through the tangle, skidding on man-made pebbles as she suddenly finds herself sliding below ground. The mouth of the cave – no, mine, she surmises – is mostly invisible from just a few feet away. Her feet nearly go out from under her, and she loses her grip on the flashlight. It goes spinning down the tunnel, beams of light jumping wildly, until it hits bottom and spins in a slow circle. She thinks she catches a glimpse of a man in the beam as it passes by, but she’s jumpy and it’s quick and she’s conscious of the fact that her mind might be playing tricks on her. When the flashlight finally comes to rest, it’s casting its light against a rough hewn wall; if there’s a nightmare waiting for her, she can’t see it.

Slowly, cautiously, she picks her way down the decline. It’s almost too dark to see, and so she edges over until she’s pressed against the wall, her boots kicking pebbles with each step. The wendigo can’t be there. If it was, she’d be dead, but that knowledge doesn’t do much to calm her racing heart.

When she reaches the flashlight, she takes a deep breath, and shines it in a slow arc around the inside of the cavern. The light slides over bare floor, over what looks like a bed of pine needles. It takes her a moment to decipher what she sees next, though it shouldn’t. There are skulls and long bones, ragged and decaying bits of fabric, a torn and shredded hiker’s pack – the remains of the wendigo’s prey.

The moan comes again and she jumps, swinging around to point her light at the source of the noise. Even knowing what wendigo are capable of, she’s caught off-guard. The back of her hand comes to her mouth and she swallows a retch. Two men are strung up from the ceiling, one dangling from bound wrists. There’s Rob, covered in blood. She can see the jagged edge of bone where it’s broken through the cloth of one of his pant legs. The break is severe – she can’t imagine the force needed to create it, but he’s still alive. She only knows that because one of them had to be, and it certainly isn’t the other. He’s dangling from his feet, ripped open from neck to groin, the ground below him sodden with blood.

“Shit,” she murmurs, feeling a shot of adrenalin make her hands tremble. She’s in the monster’s lair, and sooner or later, it’s going to return. They can’t stay there, but she doesn’t think Rob can walk, not with a break like that. Either way, she has to get him down. She can’t leave him like that, strung up like a fresh kill.

She puts her shoulder to his gut as she uses her iron-bladed knife to cut him down, catching his weight with a grunt. He barely stirs as she eases him to the floor, and she wonders just how much blood he’s lost. She can’t tell. There’s so much of it. The floor is slick with it, and she tries not to look at the other man, at the way she can see muscle, bone, and organ in the mangled mess of his chest cavity.

“Come on,” she says, more to herself than Rob. He isn’t conscious, isn’t moving. He isn’t going to be any help at all, but she can’t leave him here. Grabbing his still bound hands, she pulls hard, walking backward up the incline back to the mouth of the shaft. He’s dead weight, barely moving, and her feet are slipping underneath her as she struggles to pull him, if not to safety then at least away. “Come on,” she says again, giving another hard tug. He slides up a foot, and then another, and she tries not to think about how far it is until they’re in daylight again.

They’re halfway up the shaft when she hears the sharp crack of a gun. Six shots, one right after the other, and if her father is using his pistol, then he’s fighting in close quarters. Unthinking, she drops Rob’s hands, scrambles out of the shaft and back through the underbrush. The snow is nearly blinding now, and she races through the trees, searching for the trail. It’s impossible to tell where the shots had come from, so she runs blindly, following her instincts. She crashes through the trees, almost certain she can hear the sounds of a struggle, and nearly catapults off of another steep ridge.

This time, she manages to skid to a halt. And there, below her, is her father, on his back, the wendigo looming above him. He has his pistol out, and she hears the sharp report echo through the woods as he squeezes off another two rounds before the monster is atop him.

Without thinking, she drops to one knee and brings her rifle up to her shoulder. She can’t think about what’s happening, can’t think about the way her father’s hands are scrabbling futilely against the monster’s grip. She bites down on the finger of her glove and pulls it off, takes in a deep breath, and sights down the scope. The wendigo is huge, strongly muscled and hairy, with little left of its features to indicate it had once been a man. Another smooth breath to steady herself, the monster’s temple squarely within her crosshairs, and she fires.

Bark goes flying as the bullet hit a tree just to the left of the wendigo, and she curses. Maybe it was the fall down the slide of the ridge, but the scope is misaligned. She racks the bolt, mentally calculates the correction she needs to make, and sights down the wendigo again. It’s looking up at her now, its face twisted in rage, already in a half-crouch and ready to spring. She has no time to think, no time to double-check before she squeezes the trigger again.

Her aim is better, but not perfect. The creature stumbles back as the bullet catches it in the shoulder, and she works the bolt again. Its cry of fury fills the forest, and it’s already moving toward her, bounding up the slope. She takes one more shot with the rifle, catching it square in the shoulder again, before dropping the rifle and reaching for her Colt. She draws back the slide, takes aim, and fires. The first two shots take the monster full in the chest. She can see it is already bleeding, no doubt from the shots her dad had fired, but it absorbs the bullets and keeps coming. She empties her clip into it, scrambling backward as it continues to tear up the steep hillside. One gun expended, she pulls the other, racks the slide, and fires again.

She aims for the head this time. Her first three shots miss wide, her hands trembling, but her next two are true. The monster’s head jerks back and it stumbles, a look of incomprehension on its face. Pushing up onto her feet, Erika moves in closer, firing shot after shot until her there’s nothing but the dry click of an empty gun.

The wendigo’s head is a bloody pulp, its extremities still twitching. She watches it cautiously, edging down to recover her rifle, and pulls back the bolt to prime it again. After a second, the twitching stills, and it lays unmoving. Dead, she hopes.

She half slides, half runs down the slope to where her father is still sprawled out in the snow. Dropping to her knees beside him, she runs her hand over his face and through his hair, looking for wounds.

“Dad,” she says, voice choked. “I lost you. I was so worried.”

He smiles up at her, and for a moment, her vision blurs over with tears. “You got it?”

She gives a broken laugh. “Yeah, I got it.”

“It was a tough son-of-a-bitch, wasn’t it?” he asks, voice tired. “I’m so proud of you. You know that, don’t you?”

Her hands are on his shoulders now, and moving down his biceps. So far, nothing seems to be broken.

“You’re just saying that because you’re delirious.”

His hand comes up to cup her cheek and she freezes. “No, baby, it’s true. I love you. I didn’t do right by you. You should have had a chance to be normal, but I can’t change that now.”

“Dad?” Her voice cracks.

“Just remember that I love you more than anything.”

She sees it then, the blood slowly seeping out into the snow beneath him. “Dad?” she asks again, voice small, trembling.

“So proud of you,” he whispers, smiling. His teeth are stained red with blood this time, and she feels a hole tear open inside of her.

“Dad, no,” she begs, hands going to his shoulders. She leans down and presses a kiss to his forehead, almost hyperventilating with panic. “Please, no. Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Don’t leave me alone.”

His voice is barely audible. “Love you.”

She just has time enough to say it back before his eyes flutter closed.


	15. Chapter 15

Present Day

“What do you think?”

Erika is beaming, staring at the truck as if it were her baby.

“She looks good, doesn’t she?”

Avi sees gleaming black paint, an imposing looking grill, and the shine of silver in the bed.

“You’ve got a 5.7 liter hemi v8,” Erika says excitedly. “That’s 390 horsepower, 400 pounds of torque, and five tons of towing power. We had to strip out and replace almost everything, but Javie’s got a hook-up, so most of the parts are refurbished. She’s shiny and new, nose to tail, on the inside at least.”

Avi opens the driver’s side door slowly, surprised to see that the worn bench seat she’d sat on most of her life has been replaced by one that looks considerably fresher.

“We kept the old one,” Erika says, seeing Avi’s look of surprise, “in case it was sentimental or anything. I didn’t want to do anything with it until I spoke with you.”

Three aluminum toolboxes line the bed, one at the front and two running along the sides. One is already opened, and when Avi steps forward to look at it, she can see that Erika has already drawn meticulously precise runes along the top. The bottom has been fitted with what looks like a custom designed foam insert, and she traces a finger over the egg-shell pattern, overwhelmed by the attention to detail.

“It has to be better than carrying everything around in duffle bags,” Erika continues. “The boxes padlock, of course, but the trays are removable if you want to carry them inside. I already have all of them warded. There’s plenty of room for stakes, your rifles, the crossbow bolts, the herbs, the handguns, the knives… whatever you want.”

Even the tires are new, Avi notices.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Avi says finally, voice rough.

Erika lays her hand on the truck’s hood, smiling at it affectionately. “She was worth it. Just look at her.”

Erika has spent most of the previous three weeks largely absent. Avi had thought it was the kiss, maybe, although Erika had instigated the last one. She’d thought that maybe it had been too much, or that maybe Erika didn’t mean any of it in the light of day, when she wasn’t drunk or hung-over, and Avi’s spent more time than she would care to remember in those weeks wondering just how she feels about that.

She lets down the tailgate, and Erika wanders up, babbling on about the new bed liner. Avi could care less about the apparently crucial decision to go with a dual liner over a spray-on; she uses her good hand to grab hold of the front of Erika’s shirt and pull her forward, cutting off the explanation mid-sentence. The kiss is hard and purposeful, and she uses the momentum to back Erika up against the tailgate. She can’t lift her up, not with her broken arm, but Erika catches on easily enough. She lifts herself up, barely breaking the kiss, and Avi steps into the vee of her thighs.

When they break apart, panting, Erika laughs softly. “I take it you like it?”

Avi takes a half step back, tilting her head back to look up at Erika. “You really think we ought to try to make this work?”

“I didn’t fix up your truck to try and get in your pants.”

Avi gives her a look that says ‘like hell you didn’t’, but she doesn’t say the words. “You’re lonely.”

Erika looks away for a moment, swallowing hard. “We travel together because I’m lonely, and because you are too. This is something else.”

It’s Avi’s turn to look away. “Erika, I…”

“I’m not in any hurry.” Erika slides down off of the tailgate and brings her hands up to Avi’s hips, resting them there lightly. Avi stiffens automatically, and Erika can tell it takes a conscious effort to try to relax. “I was headed toward a bad place before we met up again. I was getting careless, reckless. But, you have to know, this isn’t gratitude, and it’s not something I want to ruin by going too fast.”

Erika kisses Avi and Avi lets her, and it’s the happiest she’s felt in months.

******

It’s been so long since anyone’s called her that the call has already gone to voicemail by the time Erika finds her phone. She doesn’t get calls often – there’s no one to place them – and the number is unfamiliar.

“Erika, if that’s even your real name…” the voice starts bitterly, then trails off. She can hear the man on the other end take a deep breath, like he’s forcing himself to start over. “It’s Rob Adamson, Lucy’s brother. From Colville.” She can hear the mingled anger and hesitation in his voice, like he’s not sure if he should say more to jog her memory or be furious at the possibility that he might need to. “Look, something’s happened. Something’s come after Lucy, and I didn’t know who else to call. I don’t know if it’s another one of those things or if it’s something else, but she’s in the hospital.” Another moment of charged silence. “I can’t believe I called you.”

There’s nothing more, and a second later an automated voice is providing her with options. Does she want to delete this message? Does she want to replay this message? Does she want to call the person who left this message?

Erika closes her eyes, heart racing. She remembers darkness and driving snow and her father’s body growing stiff beside her. She’d been almost frozen herself when they’d found her, numbly oblivious to the sounds of the helicopter, to the barking of dogs and the zig-zag of high-beam flashlights bouncing through the trees. She doesn’t remember much, but she knows she was bundled away into the hands of concerned emergency medical personnel. She knows they found Rob at her direction, and that her father was belted onto a stretcher hanging from the belly of the chopper. She knows they didn’t ask too many questions once they saw the cave and the beast she’d killed, laying stiff up on the ridge where she left him, because they weren’t really sure they wanted the answers. She supposes she should thank Rob. If he hadn’t regained consciousness long enough to activate the GPS distress beacon he carried with him, they’d probably all have died out in that forest.

Her father’s not buried in Colville. He’s not buried anywhere. She couldn’t do that to him, couldn’t tie him to the land. She’d taken his ashes to the place where his sister had died, to the last place he’d had peace before the darkness revealed itself to him. She’d taken him to the place where he’d last had innocence and where he’d lost it, and waited for some kind of sign that he was at rest. The sun had been low in the sky, the day overcast and cool, and rain the day before had left everything sharp and clean. There had been no next hunt on the horizon, no monster to chase or spirit to banish. The only things she’d had were open road and time to be filled, with no signs in sight.

She’d ignored Lucy’s calls but had listened to all of the messages. They’d started out concerned, moved to confused, and ended with angry.

“I’ve got to go,” she says, already moving. Javie has a bike she can borrow, but it won’t do. She needs something with 4-wheel drive. She needs to check the weather reports; if there’s snow on the ground, she’ll need to change the tires. Her past is coming back to haunt her, and the last thing she wants is to be stuck on some god-forsaken back mountain pass while bad things happen again to good people. Bad things she’d brought to and left with them, because Lucy Adamson should never have been forced to see this side of life.

Avi is watching her with concern, and she knows she’ll have to explain. Having someone else there means things like that, and it’s clear what she’s doing, packing a ready kit full of rock-salt shells, holy water, stakes, knives, and guns.

“Something’s come up,” she says, as if that isn’t already quite obvious. “There’s something I have to do.”

Avi nods, an eye of calm in Erika’s storm. “Where are we going?”

The thought of taking Avi to Colville, to the place where she’d lied, broken hearts, and watched her father die, is all wrong. The enormity of its wrongness makes her feel a little breathless; it isn’t a thing to be shared, for selfish reasons and not.

She turns slowly and gives a half-smile. Avi is watching her expectantly, and she’d never thought, after her Dad, that the prospect of being without a partner would hurt more than being with one. “Not this one. This is something I have to do alone.”

A flicker of confusion passes over Avi’s features. “What happened to being a team?”

“A few years ago, a job went bad.” Erika pauses and blinks back tears, hoping Avi doesn’t notice. “I need to go back and take care of some things. I’ll just be gone a few days, and you need the extra time anyway. You can stay here if you want, or you can head back to New Orleans. I’m sure your mom would love the chance to coddle you for a little while.”

“How bad was bad?”

Erika turns back to her packing, closing her eyes against the memories. “It was bad.” She takes a deep breath and forces lightness into her voice. “This is just clean-up. This is something I have to do for my own peace of mind.”

“When you say bad, it makes me think you need back-up.”

“Not this time,” she says, abandoning the packing once again. “And anyway, Avi, you’re not exactly in the best of shape. It’ll take me at least a week to get out there and back. I know your ribs are still bothering you. You could use the time. Trust me, this isn’t a big deal.”

Avi looks unconvinced. “That bag you’re packing seems to indicate otherwise.”

“Always be prepared, right?”

“I’m not going to force myself where I’m not wanted, but Erika, big job or little, you don’t have to handle things on your own anymore.”

Erika can’t tell if Avi’s hurt, concerned, or mostly apathetic. Her expression is closed off, as usual, and Erika can’t get a read. As shit as she is at playing poker, Avi certainly has the face for it.

“I’ll give you a call if I need anything. I promise.”

When Avi wraps her hand around Erika’s wrist, Erika jerks to a startled stop. “I understand feeling like there are burdens you have to shoulder alone, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that rushing headfirst into danger is going to fix the past. I can go with you or I can stay here. It’s your call, and I’ll respect your wishes. Just remember that you’re not alone. Not anymore.”

For a moment, Erika wants to cave. Avi’s watching her closely, and there’s a strength about her that’s undeniable. It’s subtle and sure, grounded in a way Erika has never been, and it would be so very easy to let Avi fix her problems for her.

But, she can’t. Not this one.

“I know,” she says, and can’t help closing the distance between them. The kiss is soft. She closes her eyes and loses herself in it. Avi’s still hesitant, far more ready to go in guns blazing on Erika’s behalf than to open her heart to her, but it means something that she allows it. That she capitulates to it, even, taking a step forward and wrapping her arm around Erika’s waist. When they finally break apart, Erika feels a traitorous impulse crawling up from deep inside her, begging her to stay. “If I need you, I’ll call.” This time, the words sound like a promise.

Avi nods shortly and lets her go.

She’s packed before she’s ready for it, and all the dominos fall into place. Javie keeps the keys to an old 84 Ford Bronco in his office. She’s welcome to it, he says, for as long as she needs it. It’s blue and grey, with 38 inch monster mudders and a shotgun rack in the back window, and she’s a little in love as soon as she throws her bag in the back. The engine turns over with a rumble that shakes the frame, and she looks up to see Avi looking down at her from the apartment window. She gives a little wave, carefree in a way she absolutely isn’t, and pulls out of the parking lot. Colville is nearly 1500 miles away; she’ll take Utah and Idaho from south to north before crossing into Washington state, where she hopes things won’t be as bad as what she’s imagining. It’s 14 hours to Idaho Falls and a motel room, even though she’s not sure if she’s going to be able to sleep. If Lucy’s dead or dying, she doesn’t know what she’ll do.

There has to be a limit, she thinks. The tires are rough on the road, and the loud hum of them lulls her into something of a trance. Even the most stubborn boxer knows there comes a time when you can’t keep walking into punches. There comes a time when you just have to lay down and let them count you out.

******

Avi looks down at the stacks of notepads she’s pulled from the box Erika liberated from the supply closet the night she came back to their little apartment drunk and despondent. She sets the photos aside. They feel too personal. It already feels like an invasion, breaking open this piece of Erika’s history; this is research only, and she needs to stick to business.

The rubber bands are cracked and gummy, and she takes her time scraping them off where they’ve stuck to the cover and pages of the notepads. Inside, she knows they’re filled with information about monsters and ghouls, but on the outside, they seem so mundane. Each notepad is approximately 2x3 inches, and they come in a limited, repeating set of bold colors – red, royal blue, and green. For some, the silver spiral at the top has gotten entangled with that of its neighbor, and she works slowly, meticulously separating them out. Part of her knows that she’s stalling, but she can’t shake the feeling that it’s wrong to be doing this with Erika gone. She has full consent, of course, and it’s probably that she’s so taciturn about her own history that it offends something within her to be peeking into someone else’s, but she wishes Erika was there to share this with her.

She wishes Erika hadn’t gone off alone.

The pages of the notepads have taken on the brittle texture and color of onion skin over time. Small, cramped writing covers the pages. It’s spiky and difficult to read, and she can almost picture Ricky standing somewhere, phone tucked between his shoulder and ear, holding a notepad in one hand as he jots down notes. There are places where the ink has smeared, his hand dragging over a word before it dried. On one page, a sliver of inked fingerprint obscures a sentence. On another, he’s drawn a diagram so intricate and obscure that she wonders if she’ll ever decipher it.

She learns quickly that he wasn’t in the habit of dating things consistently. It’s difficult to determine order and nearly impossible to tell the passage of time. Erika had been right when she’d said that he’d written certain parts in a nearly indecipherable shorthand. She begins to transcribe the notes anyway, creating a new database for the information. The more she looks at them, the more things she starts to see repeated, and it becomes clear that, even if she doesn’t have the key to it, there’s a key to be sussed out of initialisms and codes.

Time passes deceptively quickly. Pangs of hunger are the only thing that let her know she’s worked through lunch, and she comes back to the world, startled to realize that she’s worked all morning without even noticing the sounds of the garage below her. Given the time, she figures Erika’s been on the road for 16 hours, assuming no stops. She straightens and cringes – her ribs hurt, her back is stiff, and her broken arm aches – but she’s made good progress. Once she’d gotten used to Ricky’s handwriting, it had been easier to puzzle things out. Still, it’s slow, tedious work. She’s not even through one of the stacks, and the notion of sitting there and painstakingly transferring everything Ricky managed to scribble over the years is daunting.

The impulse to pick up the phone and dial is alien, and she’s already keying in the number by the time she really realizes what she’s doing. The ring is tinny and distant; she imagines Erika on a snowy mountain pass somewhere, one hand searching blindly for the phone as she keeps her eyes on the road. She’s about to hang up when Erika answers, voice weary.

“Avi?”

“Hey.” Her own voice is more intimate than she would have liked, low and warm, but she misses Erika more than she’d thought she would. “How are things going?”

Erika sighs. “I have to stop soon. I need to rest, but it’s been slow going.”

Silence falls between them. Avi doesn’t spend much time on the phone, particularly when she doesn’t have something specific to say.

“I’ve been going through your Dad’s notebooks,” she offers, leaning back in her chair. “There’s a lot of information.”

She can hear the amusement in Erika’s tone. “And how much of it can you decipher?”

“He did use a lot of initialisms,” she replies, smiling. “VCB, RT, TCS…”

“Oh, yeah. The crazy Scotsman.”

“The who?”

“That was my dad’s name for him. It was this guy. I don’t remember much about him. He was always hanging around, you know. He called dad with tips sometimes. Your dad probably knew him too.”

“He never said anything about a Scotsman.”

Erika laughed softly. “He wasn’t actually from Scotland. He was from the south somewhere. Some redneck from Alabama or Georgia or someplace like that. There was something about his name that made it fit, but I don’t remember what it was. They’re probably all names. My dad had a nickname for everyone he met. Once I get back, I’ll see I can pick out any more of them.”

“Did he have one for my dad?”

“Kind of, but not really. He called him Mr. Beauregard.”

Avi can almost see him saying it, with a hint of mockery but mostly respect. It seemed to her that Ricky had rarely taken much of anything seriously, at least when she was a child and he was getting himself into trouble she and her Daddy had to get him out of, but there’s a different side to him in those notebooks. She closes her eyes, thinking about the old guard – her Daddy, Ricky, Uncle Etienne – all gone now.

“Take care of your business,” she says finally. “I’ll see you in New Orleans.”

She’s sadder than she would have imagined at the prospect of having to leave Phoenix. Although she’s barely left the apartment while she’s recovered, she hasn’t felt trapped in the way she sometimes does when she stops by New Orleans for a stretch of time. Phoenix has been both unexpectedly eventful and unexpectedly restful, but it’s time for her to move on. Without Erika there, she feels like an interloper. She’s uncomfortably aware that she’s infringing on Javie’s good graces, and as sure as she is that he’d let her stay on as long as she’d like, it doesn’t feel right. Letting her mother coddle her as Erika suggested would have its advantages, not the least of which would be more time to work on Ricky’s notepads.

Though they’re certainly better than they have been, her ribs still aren’t at 100%. Just the thought of the drive down to New Orleans pains her, but she’s not stagnant by nature. Her desire to leave isn’t strictly just her sense of being on the edge of overstaying her welcome. The road is beckoning. It’s never a good idea to hunt while hurt, but she knows some things have slipped by in her absence and she feels the need to settle accounts. So, she calls Nannette and lets her know she’ll start out for New Orleans in a day or so. She’ll go slow, she promises, once she’s warned her mother that she’s a little worse for wear. Nannette’s voice has the hint of steel in it that Avi’s always associated with the worry over her daddy that her mother never could quite hide, but it doesn’t help to feel guilt. Her daddy hadn’t been able to change, and neither is she.

She’s not going to leave until the afternoon of the next day anyway. That’ll give her time to clean up any mess they’ve made and will leave only a few hours of driving for her before she has to stop for the night. For once, there’s no hurry.

******

By the time Erika gets to Colville, she’s been behind the wheel for fourteen hour stretches two days in a row. Deepening snow has made the last day slow going. Because of it, she’s had to be constantly alert, and now she’s exhausted. It’s almost painful to pry her fingers away from the steering wheel, and she flexes them tiredly. Her grip on it has been so tight for so long that it’s as if her bones have fused in that position.

She’d had to stop just outside of Flagstaff and have snow tires put on the Bronco. The wait had been painful; every minute felt like it was putting even more distance between herself and her opportunity to put things right. Now that she’s in Colville, though, it looks just like she’d remembered. It’s a small little dot on the map in the middle of nowhere, a grid of a town settled in the valley between distant mountains. Despite the years behind her, it feels familiar in a way that makes her chest ache.

The hospital is in the southeast corner of town. Like everything else about Colville, it’s small – only three floors – with the kind of large, unadorned cross on the front that marks it as an old, Catholic institution. She almost expects to push through the doors and straight back into the 1950s, with nurses in caps and starched, white uniforms scurrying past doctors with packs of cigarettes tucked into the front pocket of their white coats.

No one seems to want to help her find Lucy Adamson. Everyone she asks glares at her, as if they’ve all been told that she’s the reason Lucy is there in the first place. She’s on the verge of mounting a room-by-room search when she sees a face that takes her back to that day in the woods.

“Rob,” she says, voice hoarse.

He doesn’t look like the carefree hiking enthusiast he’d been before she’d come into his life. These days, his face is gaunt. He walks with a pronounced limp – she remembers a badly broken leg – and his dark hair is prematurely streaked with gray. His jaw is set as he turns toward her, eyes tired and rimmed with red. The impulse to run is instinctive. She can almost hear her dad’s voice in her ear, intoning gravely that this is why they don’t stick around. They might leave a situation better off than it was before they came, but rarely do they leave it happier.

For a long moment, he doesn’t speak. He looks her over, as if searching for the ways that time and experience may have changed her too. “You came,” he says finally, voice flat.

Her throat is dry, and the words come out raw. “Of course. I want to help.”

“Help?” The word is a snarl. He has to rein himself in, his throat bobbing as he swallows angry words. There’s something about him that exudes an air of exhaustion, as if he hasn’t stopped running away from the things he saw.

Any anger she might feel is futile; she feels helpless, trapped by fate. “I’ll do what I can. I need to know everything you know. Can I talk to Lucy? Does she remember anything?”

At the sound of his sister’s name, Rob’s shoulders slump. “I didn’t tell her I called you,” he says wearily. “I wasn’t sure if you would come. It was rough on her when you disappeared after the… after what happened. It was a lot to take in, and she really liked you.”

After what happened. Erika didn’t like thinking about it in much more depth than that, either. It was hard to predict what would trigger a memory of that day. It could be a small thing, could be only tangentially related, and suddenly she was back in that forest, watching the light fade from her father’s eyes. They were visceral memories, so real they made the breath catch in her throat, and now she was back in Colville and surrounded by them.

There’s no good way to handle this situation, she thinks. She’d both left hurt trailing along behind her after she’d left Colville and taken it with her. Lucy had been a nice girl, and for that short time she’d been with her, Erika had been able to pretend, in part, that her life was a normal life. Her life wasn’t a normal life, though, and the reminder had been swift and brutal.

“I want to help,” she says again, feeling a headache settle in low behind her eyes. “There are no lies between us this time, Rob. You know who I am and you know what I do. You called me here for a reason.”

He looks away, as if he can only stand the sight of her for moments at a time. “She doesn’t know you’re here,” he says again, hands shoved deep in his pockets. “She’s in and out of it. They have her on sedatives so that she doesn’t move around too much. They kept her awake for a long time. She had a concussion, but they were afraid there might be something worse. A blood clot, something. I don’t know. They tell me it wasn’t as severe as they thought, but she has a broken collarbone and a broken nose. Something knocked her around. She doesn’t remember anything.”

“Maybe not anything she’d tell you,” Erika says gently.

Anger flares in his eyes. “Do you even think about what you leave behind?” he asks bitterly. “Once you’ve played the hero and left town, we’re the ones who have to pick up the pieces. I couldn’t sleep for months. I was in physical therapy for a year. I can’t go out in the woods without having a panic attack. You used me. You used Lucy.”

Her own anger won’t do any good, so she tamps it down. “We all lost a lot that day,” she says instead, hands clenched into fists. “Where did it happen?”

His expression softens, but not by much. “At her house. The police were there, but they didn’t find anything. They’re saying she interrupted a home invasion, but nothing was stolen.”

She wants to see Lucy, but more than that, she wants to be someplace else. “I’ll go take a look,” she says, knowing they both need the space. “I’ll be back later to talk to Lucy. She may be able to tell me something she doesn’t even know is important.”

He pulls a key off of his key ring and throws it to her. “Find this thing,” he says, “and take care of it.”

******

She has vague memories of Lucy’s house, of wooden stairs that creaked under their feet and a soft quilt covering the bed. That was years before, though, and now she feels like an intruder, sitting at Lucy’s small kitchen table. The house is chilled, but not as cold as it is outside, with a sharp wind blowing in from the west. She shrugs out of her thick parka and lays it on the table, steels herself for what she knows needs to be done, and grabs the bag she’s laid on the floor by her feet. The tools of her trade clank, loud in the otherwise silent space. She has an iron rod in her hand; she needs the comfort of it, though she doesn’t think this is a ghost or spirit. Hauntings don’t generally happen without some horrible history, and even if she’d left behind some of her own, this isn’t that.

The crime scene tape is gone, the scene released, but the police have left the carnage as they found it. She crosses the threshold into the living room, taking in the broken table, the shattered glass of a picture now hanging crookedly on the wall, and the broken shards of a vase scattered across the floor. It looks like what the police say it was, a scuffle with a burglar interrupted in his work, but there’s too much coincidence here to discount something else. So, she examines everything carefully, looking for signs. It could be a poltergeist, she supposes, but she’ll need more information before she explores that path any further. She’ll need to talk to Lucy, to see if she somehow managed to get herself cursed.

She catches the movement out of the corner of her eye, the barest flick of a shadow across a narrow beam of light, and straightens. There aren’t many things that have shadows, and those that do tend to be corporeal. Her fingers tighten around the iron rod in her hand and she stills, forcing her breathing into a calming rhythm that helps counteract the adrenaline making her heart race. Wind buffets the house in a sudden gust; behind it, she thinks she hears shoes on hardwood. The iron in her hand isn’t as reassuring as it was a moment ago, not now that she might be facing something that wasn’t inclined to dissipate into thin air. She wants her gun, but it’s in her bag, so slowly, quietly, she lowers the bag to the floor and kneels beside it, her eyes up and scanning the room as she searches for the zipper. The contents shift, clanking loudly, and she bites back a curse, giving up on silence.

Before she can find her gun case, there’s the sound of rushing footsteps, and she knows without turning that whoever is in the house is coming for her. She spins, lashing out with the iron rod, and catching someone hard on the shin. The rod hits flesh with a dull, meaty thunk. She’s up in a flash, catching the figure hard in the abdomen, and then once more on the shoulder, each blow connecting with something distinctly of this world.

It’s a man, she sees, and he roars in pain, jabbing out with his fist in self-defense. It’s a wild blow, but it clips her just below the ear, sending her staggering back a step, and before she can recover her balance, he springs. She brings the rod up, catches him in the wrist and thinks she hears the snap of bone, but he has momentum on his side. He puts his shoulder against her sternum in a tackle that sends her crashing back into the wall behind her hard enough to knock the already askew picture to the floor. Her head bounces against sheetrock and she tastes blood in her mouth, her teeth catching the inside of her lip. He’s still pressing hard against her, limiting her range of movement, and as she tries to bring the rod down on his back, he catches her wrist. His hold is tight, tight enough that he’s going to leave a bruise, and he slams it into the wall over and over until she loses her grip on the rod. She curses, lunging forward, but he has mass and gravity on his side. The force of his body slamming against hers sends her back into the wall, hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Before she can try again, he snaps his forehead against hers in a vicious head butt. She’s seeing black at the edge of her vision, and knows it’s going to be over soon if she can’t get away. There’s little room to maneuver; she brings her heel down hard on his foot, stomping twice before he rears back, breathing hard. Her next blow is a knee between his legs, and he crumples, slamming her into the wall again, making a noise of pure agony.

“Fucking bitch,” he growls, and the last thing she sees is his elbow headed toward her temple.

She doesn’t know how long she’s out, but when she blinks into consciousness, her hands and feet are bound and her eyes covered by a blindfold. He’s pulled her knees up, the rope twisted around them in an awkward, reverse hog-tie. She tests the knots, but they’re strong. There’s precious little give, and certainly not enough for her to work her way free.

She’s sore all over, more than she would expect, even given the blows she’d taken. Drugged, she figures, given the cotton dryness of her mouth. Drugged and not in Colville any longer, because she can hear the quiet hiss of tires on road. It’s a big vehicle, with a big rumbling motor that shifts gears as the terrain changes beneath it, but she’s laying on something soft. It’s warmer than she would expect if she’d been thrown in the bed of a truck. An SUV, she thinks, or maybe the sleeper cab of an 18-wheeler.

Lucy had been targeted by a ghoul, no doubt, but one that was very much alive.

Erika tries to think back to the confrontation in the house. It had been over quickly, no matter that it felt like it had stretched on for hours at the time, and she’d been so busy trying to get away that she hadn’t focused much on her attacker. Now, tied up and drugged, she isn’t going anywhere soon. Blinking back the fog surrounding her thoughts, she tries to call to mind his face. She’s seen him before, often enough for him to be familiar, but the associations that come to mind don’t fit. She pictures him in a bar, sharing secrets and war stories with her dad over a pint of beer. A hunter? A hunter did this to her? Maybe it’s a mistake, some horrible case of mistaken identity. Was this hunter on the trail of whatever had hurt Lucy, and somehow thought he’d found his prey in her?

It didn’t make sense. He’d had to have known she was human. The things they hunted didn’t bleed, and if they did, they were the type of being that couldn’t be taken down by a well-placed elbow.

Her thoughts trail back to the few glimpses she’d gotten of him, but her mind is fuzzy. Drugs, she thinks again, and it hits her that this is a single, lucid moment she’s going to lose when she feels her eyes start to close again and can’t do anything about it.

******

Avi holds back on the need to call for as long as she can. She’s not used to feeling this way, like there’s a connection pulled tight and in danger of severing if she doesn’t manage to find some way to make it strong again. It’s only been a little over a day since she talked to Erika last; she’s not the kind of girl who clings, so she tries to tell herself this is different. There is danger lurking, and she may not know if she’s needed unless she reaches out.

Still, she makes herself wait an hour, and then another.

“Hello?”

She doesn’t recognize the voice. It’s masculine, weary, and she ends the call on impulse. A few days away, and already her hard-earned trust has been broken?

The phone rings in her hand, and she steels herself for a torrent of excuses and rationalizations.

“Erika,” she says flatly, the few words she’ll need to end this already lining themselves up in her mind.

“Who are you?” It’s the same voice, the same man. “Where is Erika?”

She’s on the verge of pointing out that she obviously expected Erika to be on the other end of the phone and that, if she isn’t, she’s hardly in any position to know her true location, when panic sneaks up along her spine. “What do you mean, where is Erika?” she asks, her voice as calm and smooth as if she were inquiring about the weather. “Do you not know where she is?”

“She’s… shit.” There’s a moment of silence and a distant noise of frustration. “No, I don’t know where Erika is. She was supposed to help, but I can’t find her. The house is a wreck, but her car’s out front and her bag is on the floor.”

Avi can’t do anything about the panic. It’s spreading now, across her ribs and up into her throat. “I need you to tell me everything. Who you are, where you are, and what you see.”

The name means nothing – a story Erika hasn’t shared – but the voice on the other end of the line paints a picture that does nothing to quell the way her panic is turning into dread. A fight, things broken, and maybe some blood. Erika’s bag on the floor, contents spilled out. Her gun is still there, still fully loaded. Her jacket is there. Her phone. Everything but Erika herself.

“She told me things had gone wrong there before,” Avi says, once the facts are laid out in front of her. “I need to know what happened.”

As he tells it, Avi knows this isn’t the way she should be hearing this story. It should be coming from Erika, when she trusts enough and feels comfortable enough to share it, but instead Avi hears it from this stranger on the other end of a phone line. It’s terror, survival, and death, and she can almost picture Ricky laying in the snow, bloodied and broken. The last memory she has of her father, he was hale and hearty, giving her a smile and a wave as he drove away and left her standing in front of her dorm. The last memory Erika has of her father is this, watching the light leave his eyes and helpless to do anything about it.

Wendigo, the rational part of her mind notes. Shot dead, with no indication that another had stepped in to take its place. A sister, and Avi has no right to feel a little flare of jealousy, and Rob, the brother, the man on the other end of the phone. A wendigo and a sister attacked in her home, left with a concussion and broken bones and now Erika gone as well, all signs pointing to a fight. Colville, Washington, is nearly a full day’s drive in the best of conditions. As it is now, she’ll be lucky to get there in 36 hours.

“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Avi says, and wonders what she’ll do when she does. Gone without a trace the brother said, and he may not know what to look for when it comes to clues, but Avi’s not getting a good feeling about this. She has a nagging intuition that tells her that she’ll be chasing nothing but ghosts in Colville, but there’s nowhere else to start. If she has to, she’ll walk the forest. She’ll search the state. She’ll find Erika and whatever it is that has her, and she will deal with it with the kind of vengeance she hasn’t been able to mete out in far too long.

Her goodbyes to Javie are hasty, and she feels guilty leaving him in the dark about what’s happening, but there’s nothing he could do but worry. She throws her things into the truck, feels the engine turn over smooth and sweet below her, and ignores the way her fingers ache where they curve around the steering wheel. The roads are clear until Arizona changes from flatlands to mountains, and she has to slow, picking her way along well travelled but still icy roads.

When her mother calls, she’s not far from the Utah border, moving through mountain passes at little more than a crawl.

“You’re headed for danger that isn’t there,” is the first thing she says, voice breathless and urgent, and Avi rolls her eyes so hard she’s in danger of following them off of the road.

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

She can almost hear her mother’s scowl over the line. “Avi, I know you don’t put much truck in what I can do, but you need to listen to me. The road you’re on won’t lead you to where you need to go. There have been signs and there have been auguries, and I’ve tried to ignore them. Lord knows you wouldn’t believe me, I told myself, but I couldn’t continue to pretend not to hear what they were saying. I don’t even know if I want to tell you. I know the beginning of this story but not the ending, and when I look for it, all I see is darkness. This is going to end where it began, but I can’t tell you what that means.”

Her mother’s voice is so earnest that Avi pulls over to the side of the road and brings her hand to her forehead, rubbing hard. “Tell me what you’ve seen,” she says finally.

“I dreamed of a snake chasing a rabbit across the path, bad luck and enemies doubled. I asked questions of the water, but the answers were not clear. This danger is not a danger to you now, but it could become so in the future. It touches you now, though. It’s close to you, but even as you travel toward it, it moves further away.”

Avi feels her throat tighten, and as much as she doesn’t want to believe – has never wanted to believe – the outlandish claims her mother makes, she can’t shake the feeling of uncanny rightness. “Erika has disappeared,” she says, eyes fluttering closed. “Someone called, and she said she had to go. She said that a job had gone badly a couple of years back and that she needed to clean up a lingering mess, but she’s gone, Mama. There’s evidence of a fight, and all of her things are still there but she’s not.”

“And you are going after her?”

Avi nods for a moment before realizing her mother can’t see. “I am.”

“You won’t find her there, Avi, wherever there is. I can tell you that. I don’t know where she’s going, but if this is indeed what I have seen, she is gone from there. I see endings at the beginning.”

“Endings at the beginning,” Avi repeats bitterly. Windshield wipers move steadily, lazily, brushing away the gathering snow. Snowflakes dance in front of the headlights and she feels cold continue to creep steadily into the cab of the truck. “This is what it’s always been, riddles that tell me nothing. What does it mean? That’s what I need to know.”

On the other end of the line, her mother sighs. “It means what it means. Maybe it’s best if you don’t figure it out. Maybe where that girl’s going is the danger that could hunt you next, if it finds you. Maybe you should stay away.”

“I can’t.” Avi’s voice breaks unexpectedly. “I’m starting to think that the harder I try, the less I can.”

“When the heart is involved, I suppose you can’t.” The connection crackles as the snow begins to fall more heavily. “I’ll keep looking, but I don’t know if I’ll get a better answer than the one we have. I know you’ve long denied your gift, but you may have to seek the answer in dreams and portents of your own, Avi.”

With the weight of futility sitting heavily on her chest, Avi slams her uninjured palm into the steering wheel. What good is the gift of sight if it doesn’t illuminate anything? Endings at the beginnings – it’s the kind of crap they sell down on Bourbon Street to drunk tourists looking for a taste of the occult. Life is full of beginnings. Is Erika on her way to Natchitoches? To New Orleans? To some cheap motel in Tennessee? To some other beginning Avi doesn’t even know about?

She pulls back onto the road and drives a half hour before she sees a sign for a motel with free wi-fi. Part of her wants to keep driving, but if she’s not getting closer to where she needs to be, she’s getting farther. It’s freezing out; her teeth are chattering by the time she’s managed to unload her bag, her laptop, and the notepads Erika had handed over to her care, and the room’s certainly nothing to write home about. Not that she notices, really, scanning through her database for something, anything, she might have missed.

A connection niggles at the edge of her mind but refuses to be made, and the harder she stares at her laptop’s screen, the fuzzier the words on it become. Outside, snow is piling up against the wheels of her truck, and somewhere, something bad is happening.

“Fine,” she says finally, decisively. She has almost everything she needs in her truck, and the rest she buys or steals from the gas station restaurant across the street. Back in her room, she pulls the batteries from the home-style smoke detector, and sits at the room’s lone table, laptop closed.

Bottles clink as she opens the bag she’d pulled from her trunk. The cup of boiling water she’d bought is still steaming, despite her trek in the snow, and she tosses the teabag that came with it. On the table she lays out a sachet of her own – salvia, acacia beauverdiana and caven and flavescens, mucana pruriens, ground acorn, and agrimony. The dried mushrooms, the leaves and buds, all added in precise portions. She ties the little square into a knot and drops it in the water to steep. From a small bottle, she tips in a two drops, pale yellow, and watches the color disperse.

The bowl she’d stolen is plain white ceramic, hardy and serviceable, and she scatters other herbs. Alder and angelica for protection, and bay leaf and belladonna to help guide her way through her dreams. A moment to consider, and she adds bergamot, lavender, the dried rind of a lime, and a pinch of mullein.

When she judges the tea ready, she removes the sachet. She’s set aside a bundle of sage; it lights quickly, and she crosses it in the air over her little altar of a table before dropping it in the bowl. The other herbs there begin to smolder, and the smoke grows thick enough for her to breathe in three deep, cleansing breathes. The tea is bitter, but she drinks it quickly so that there’s no time to rethink what she’s doing. It burns her throat, and she feels its effects quickly. The room starts to tilt, the psychedelics laced through it already taking hold of her brain and twisting it, and she stumbles to the bed, smoke still filling the air.

Above the bed, a light burns. It burns her retinas and makes her eyes water, and she tries to look away, but she can’t. After a moment, she recognizes it as the sun. Beneath her bare feet hot sand and gravel burn and bite, and she stumbles. It’s hot and dry; she doesn’t sweat but wishes she could. The land looks familiar somehow, and she teeters to a stop, fighting back nausea as she tries to filter through her memories in search of why.

“It’s about time to you came to visit,” she hears, the voice deep and teasing, and she nearly stumbles over her feet as she spins.

“Daddy!” she says, and her heart expands, big enough to burst. “How long have you been here? I didn’t realize you were waiting.”

“Nothing to do but wait,” he says, his smile beautiful. “Wait and watch.”

She nods. She hadn’t thought about it before, but it makes sense. “I’ve lost something,” she says, brow tightening in a frown. “Lost it at the beginning.”

He wraps an arm around her, his hand big and heavy against her shoulder. She relaxes under the touch, surprised by how much she’s missed it. When she looks over at him, he has his face tilted up to the sun, eyes closed. “I miss this.” She follows his gaze to the sun, blinks heavily as it burns into her. When she opens her eyes again, they’re sitting in the truck. Out the window, desert and scrub stretch out as far as she can see, scarred by the thin tracks left behind by infrequent rains. Despite the heat, she shivers. Her palms itch and she wipes them against her jeans, not surprised when they leave behind streaks of blood.

“I miss you,” she says, chest aching.

His smile is blinding. She smiles back, and follows as he gestures lazily at the windshield. “Watch out,” he says, and she focuses just in time to see it coming at her, black and massive. It crashes into the glass, shattering it. It spiderwebs and sags, but doesn’t fail. Against it, the creature snarls at her with sharp teeth. Spittle flies from its mouth, speckled with blood, and it lunges, its flat, hairy noise smearing bloody trails. Thin, papery wings tipped with sharp, curling claws dig into the glass, shredding through it and driving shards of glass into the cab, cutting through her jeans and into her flesh. Ignoring the pain, she braces herself against the seat and puts her boots to the glass, kicking out hard from her chest. Once, twice, and the glass shatters outward and into the beast and it glares at her as it tumbles back into the sunshine and disappears.

Beside her, her father hisses. She looks over, terrified, not ready to lose him again, but he’s smiling at her. Blood drips from his fangs and his eyes shine black and she remembers.

“Am I in danger?”

His face contorts in pain. “Not from me,” he says, his lovely, melodious voice cracked and harsh. “They’re not my family.”

She shivers again, feels numbness creep into her feet and hands. “Let’s go back,” she pleads. “Let’s go back to the way it was before.”

“Gotta clean this up,” he says, wiping his hand over the dashboard, and she doesn’t know if he’s listening to her. She’s getting used to the fangs, barely even registers them as he smiles wryly. “I’ve had this truck just as long as I’ve had you. Does she still run sweet?”

Avi smiles back at him. “I take care of her. Erika takes care of her. She loves this truck.”

“Is that Ricky’s girl?”

She fights back a blush. “We travel together.”

“Is she still trouble?”

“Sometimes.”

“You chasing her again?”

“Can’t chase someone you can’t find.”

He nods, hands her a beignet. “Did you ever make it out to the fort?”

Powdered sugar mixes with blood and sticks to her fingers. She licks it off; it’s sweet and bitter and settles irritatingly on the back of her tongue. Frost begins to crawl across the remaining windows and her breath turns to ice. “Is that where it started?”

There’s snow on sand. It should melt, she thinks, as she watches the drifts grow deeper. It creeps up past her ankles and reminds her that she’s cold. The truck is gone, replaced by a bench of shiny new wood and a wrought iron frame. In the distance, she sees the vague outline of a house, its wood weathered and gray.

“Hello there, Mr. Magpie,” her father says as the bird settles onto the seat between them, fluttering its wings. Feathers stand up along the back of its neck and down along its breast as it settles itself. “How is your wife today?” The bird looks between them, tilting its head sharply in the ways birds do, its eyes obsidian and angry. “Can’t let the devil catch you looking,” Beau says, reaching over to take her hand. “We’ve got the best seats in the house, baby girl. Are you ready for the fight?”

Together, the three of them stare into the night.

******

Avi gasps her way into consciousness. The room is freezing, cast in weak, gray light. It smells of sage and something darker and edged with the tang of metal. She flexes the fingers of her broken arm, wincing as she works out the stiffness, and tries to collect herself. Her stomach roils with nausea and she leans over, barely finding the small, plastic trash bin before her body purges itself of the poison she’d taken. Sleep beckons, but she has to push forward. She knows, now, has read the signs herself.

Erika is waiting for her, back where it all began.


	16. Chapter 16

When she comes to, the world is drifting lazily from side to side. For a moment, she thinks she’s on a boat, maybe, but how? There was Lucy and Colville, the fight, the fleeting snippets of drugged lucidity, and now the gentle, soothing rocking.

“With us again, are you?”

With who, she wants to ask, but the question echoes inside her skull. She blinks slowly, squinting her eyes against faint light, all of the things she wants to ask bound tight within her chest. It’s happened before; she wakes from sleep paralyzed, not sure what’s a dream and what isn’t. She struggles to move, to speak, but all she can do is wait helplessly for it to pass. It’s been a nightmare, then, all of it, and when she fights through it, she’ll tell Avi all about it.

“I have to apologize.” The dream voice is cheery, nimble, and British, maybe, with a hint of roughness around the edges. “I’m afraid my associate was a little over eager with the sedatives.”

She blinks again, and the speaker slowly materializes in front of her. He’s lounging against an old chipped desk, wearing a crisp white shirt and fitted brown trousers. His eyes flick up to meet hers; she can’t see the color of them through the muted light, can’t see much more than strong eyebrows, the hints of a beard, and black hair speckled faintly with gray.

“Who are you?” she asks, not sure if she’s actually managed to say the words. The rocking is settling now that she has something to focus on, and she shifts as she feels herself slowly sink back into her body. She aches, deeply and thoroughly. It doesn’t take much to verify what she has to assume, that’s she’s bound and helpless, but feeling is returning slowly. She wiggles her fingers, feels the brush of what she assumes is wood. Tied, then, and tightly.

The man’s face breaks into a smile. “Odd, isn’t it, that we’ve caused each other so much pain, and you don’t even know who I am. It’s Fiveash, at your pleasure.”

Her mouth is dry and her lips feel swollen. It makes her words slurred and clumsy. “What do you think I’ve done to you?”

His smile deepens. “You killed my family,” he says, rolling up his sleeve with mindless precision even as his eyes stay locked on hers. “I thought I’d return the favor, of a sort. But first,” he beckons, and a shadow peels itself from the wall and skulks forward. “I told him he had to wait. If he’d accidentally killed, you, well… That would have been unfortunate.”

The shadow sinks to his knees in joyous submission. “You,” she says, and she knows him. Knows him from Lucy’s house, yes, but from stories told over bottles of beer, loud and raucous the way stressful, life-threatening things become in the retelling between men not given to indulging in melancholy. “You were his friend.”

When he looks at her, it’s with a faint sneer. “No.”

The magnitude of the betrayal overwhelms her. “He trusted you,” she says hoarsely. “My dad… my dad, he trusted you.”

“And look where that got him.”

It falls into place, things half remembered. The initials in Ricky’s notepad, the phone call all those years ago, that led them from Nebraska to Washington. The Scotsman, the crazy Scotsman, who wasn’t a Scotsman at all. Shaddish Campbell, with his thick southern accent, who was always there, always in the background, telling stories and handing out leads on rumors he’d heard. Who’d called Ricky and told him about a wendigo up north.

“Enough,” Fiveash says. He smiles down at the still kneeling Shaddish, runs a hand through his hair as Shaddish tilts his head up to look at him, and it’s intimate and wrong. Worse, still, when Fiveash throws his head back, face contorting with pleasure, and she sees the sharp edge of fangs.

Vampire. Panic rushes over her and she tenses, would run but she’s anchored to this chair, and he’s biting into the underside of his wrist and offering it to Shaddish and there’s blood. Blood dripping from twin wounds, down pale skin, and into Shaddish’s open, waiting mouth.

“No,” she whispers, starting to hyperventilate, sees the way Shaddish holds tight to the vampire’s arm and licks the blood from his skin reverently. He’s a traitor, has betrayed her, her father, and who knows how many other hunters, for this. To be a pet, a vampire’s favorite.

“There now,” the vampire says like an indulgent parent to a spoiled child as he pulls his arm away and licks clean a thin trickle that’s escaped toward his elbow. “Enough of that. It’s time for me to tend to our guest.”

Shaddish’s eyes flicker to her, burning with hatred.

“It might not be me,” she says, voice little more than a snarl, “but one of us will figure out what you are, and we’ll come for you.”

Her snarl is returned by a sneer. “I’d like to see you try. Any of you. Do you know how long I’ve been sending hunters to their graves? Once I finish with you, I’m going to have a little fun with Beau’s girl. Or maybe we’ll let you do for her.”

Fury rolls over her. She strains against her bonds uselessly, muscles locked tight, so focused on her human foe that she almost forgets about her vampire one.

“There’s time enough for this later,” Fiveash says, stepping between them. He fills her vision, and she looks up, wondering if these are her last moments. He wraps his hand in her hair and pulls, snapping her head to the side, and she realizes his intent only when she sees his fangs bared once again.

“No,” she tries to say, but it’s too late. The pain is deceiving, nothing at first, even though she feels his mouth, cold against her skin. A second for her brain to register what’s happened, and it burns sharp before mellowing into a dull ache. Blood spills down her neck and chest, soaking into her dirty white thermal. The noises he makes are wet, indulgent, his throat working slowly as he drinks. He’s playing with her, she thinks, feeling weakness spread through her, being sloppy and careless and letting her bleed out. Her heart is racing, trying to keep her alive, but it’s a losing battle. She feels feverish, ears burning and cheeks hot, and her vision is starting to darken.

She’s always expected a better death than this.

It’s more instinctive than anything else, the way she licks her lips. The taste on her tongue is bitter, the fluid hot and thick. Soon, it fills her mouth. She’s pulling hard, achingly thirsty, only vaguely aware that she’s chasing after him, that she’s drinking from a wound he’s torn in his own flesh. When she does, the blood curdles in her belly, but she can’t stop. All of the life he’s stolen is returned to her ten-fold, and she can’t stop. 

“I’ve been on this Earth for over 500 years,” he’s saying, one hand stroking her hair as she laps at blood now slowed to a trickle. “I have the luxury of time. Maybe you will too. Time enough to think of all the things you could have done differently. Time to spend hungry and weak, a predator without a pack for protection, worrying that one of those annoying little hunters will come for you. And what will you do when one does? Die or fight?”

“Never,” she says, her voice raw. She hears the words but they barely register, and she answers with a truth that transcends his questions.

“If you say so, little girl,” he says with a smile. He moves, almost too quickly for her eyes to track, and suddenly he’s standing in front of Shaddish. Another ghost of movement and his hand is around Shaddish’s throat, squeezing tightly. She hears Shaddish’s gasp of surprise and panic, the gurgle of a windpipe being crushed. The vampire has him up in the air, suspended from a single hand as if he was a ragdoll and not a man, kicking and flailing and turning purple in the face. “But here, then, is your fate. I’ve decided to reward my man here,” he pauses, smiling indulgently up at Shaddish as the man claws weakly at the arm holding him in midair. “He’s been a pet for a long time. A very long time, and he’s done his duty well. I could have kept him at my side for the rest of his natural life, feeding him just enough hope to stay in my thrall, but this will be ever so much better.”

He moves again, lightning quick, and Erika jerks backward so violently that she moves the chair a full two inches. There, quivering in the thin bit of wood just beside her hip and just below the rope binding her right hand to the chair, is a blade.

“Another minute and our mutual friend here will transition out of this pathetic farce humans call life and into the glory of a new one You might want to move quickly, dear, because when he does, you’re all his. I’m of the mind that the first kill’s sweeter if it’s earned. Whether you’ve any untainted blood left in you is something he’ll discern, if he’s lucky.

As he’s continued to speak, Erika has been working the ropes around her wrists against the razor sharp blade of the knife. It parts the hemp quickly, slicing straight through to skin, and she shakes her newly freed hand to return the feeling to it. It’s not easy work prying the knife from the chair. Thrown with supernatural strength, it’s buried deeply and she has to rock it back and forth to pry it loose. It’s a further struggle to reach the rope on her other arm. After a few long seconds of wasted effort, she cuts the rope binding her legs instead. The angle remains awkward and the rope burns against her wrist as she twists to make the position more tenable. Blood drips where skin is worn away with the friction, but a few clean swipes with the knife and she’s free.

Her legs are full of pins and needles, her feet nearly numb. She’s stiff all over from the lost days spent hogtied in the back of the truck and the hours spent tied to the chair, but beneath all of that is the hot, vibrant pulse of vampire blood flowing through her veins. She takes a moment to center herself and the pain recedes as if swept away. Suddenly, as if a flip has been switched, she feels more alive than she has ever felt before. Alive, strong, and powerful.

“So what will it be?” Fiveash asks, abruptly releasing his grip and letting Shaddish’s lifeless body crash to the floorboards. “Kill yourself now so you’ll turn in enough time to have a fighting chance at taking down the man who engineered the death of your father? And he did, which should be motivation enough. Or have you deluded yourself into thinking you have a chance of winning with mortal strength alone?” He laughs, seeing her decision in the cold glint of her eyes. “Very well, then. When he kills you, when he’s your sire, remember you had the choice and were too afraid to seize control of your own destiny.”

She whips her hand forward, the knife flying unerringly. When it’s no more than a foot from his eye, he reaches up to catch it, the movement almost lazy. At his feet, Shaddish begins to stir.

“Well then, little hunter, I trust you’ll die violently. Till we meet again.”

******

She’s never actually seen a transformation, so there’s some level of detached interest warring with fear and anticipation as she watches Shaddish push to his feet. He stumbles slightly, weaves for a moment, before tilting his head back and breathing in deeply. She knows she should move, should find some way to take the offensive and finish this before he fully realizes the advantages his unlife offers, but she hesitates. A shudder racks him before he plants his feet at shoulder width and shakes himself like a dog fresh from the river, but it’s the breathing that bothers her. Maybe it’s unnecessary, a long ingrained habit of humanity he’s unwittingly kept, or maybe there’s still enough human left in him to make him not wholly monster. And even if he is still on the brink, one step away from dead and deserving of everything she wants to mete out, does it matter? He’s still a traitor. A murderer. The man who led her father to his death. She’s never thought of hunting as murder before, not really, because the things she kills are abominations. She kills to protect. She kills because she is one of a handful who knows the secrets lurking in the darkness and can’t stand by and do nothing. Does the presence of a basic function of human biology suffice to keep him from that edge?

He turns slowly, the grin on his face full of an ecstatic menace that finally jolts her free of her trance.

There’s blood lust in his eyes. He watches her with the intensity of a predator, his fingers drawing into loose fists and spine supple and supine. He tilts his head from side to side, as if to work a kink out of his neck. The dark bruise left behind by Fiveash fades, fingerprints disappearing to be replaced by skin only a hint paler than it had been when he was alive. And even if breathing is no longer a necessary function, or at least she thinks it isn’t, his chest continues to move in a slow, constant rhythm. His nostrils flare as if he’s picked up her scent and she takes an unconscious step back.

He’s not yet a full vampire. She knows this from the lore, knows that he will have to feed on human blood before the transition is complete and that in the interim, he’ll be little more than a starving beast. It’s a fight to hold on to humanity once the turn starts, and he has no reason to try. This is what he’s wanted, what has turned him into a monster’s pet, and she’s the last obstacle standing in his way.

She breaks and runs.

The house had been long abandoned the first time she’d been there, as a child, and now it’s a few steps past decrepit. Fallen ceiling tiles litter the floor, causing her to skid, and walls bear empty spaces between struts as if the house has rotted down to its bones. There’s scant light, only the barest hint of the moon’s glow filtering past broken windows, but with vampire blood coursing through her veins, it might as well be noon. When she sees the heavy wooden door, she makes the decision in a split second. A hard kick sends it splintering, and she grabs a jagged end radiating out from the hole she’s created and pulls hard. It takes the application of all of her enhanced strength, but the wood splits. Another judicious kick and another hard pull and she finds herself with a thin length of solid oak nearly as long as her arm.

Absent her usual vampire killing accessories, it’ll have to do.

He’s on her heels the moment she turns around, lips pulled back to bare a mouth full of narrow, razor sharp teeth. They’re stained with blood, like maybe they’ve just pushed through his gums, and she doesn’t want to think about all of the advantages he now has. Instead she lashes out, connecting with a solid jab to the bridge of his nose and driving him back half a step. He slips a second jab, circling around to her left and catching her with a solid body shot to the ribs. It nearly knocks the breath from her, and she hunches over instinctively, leaving him with an easy opening. Another punch connects solidly with her temple, and for a moment, the world spins.

She kicks out in an attempt to buy time and space, the flat of her foot pushing hard into his stomach. It sends him stumbling back, and she straightens, shaking her head to clear it. He’s moving back toward her as soon as he can shift momentum, slipping slightly on one of the downed ceiling tiles and turning it to dust. There’s just enough time for her to move the improvised stake to her right hand before he’s in close again, and she swings. The movement is cramped. It doesn’t have enough power behind it, so when the wood catches him on the jaw, it’s enough to snap his head around but not enough to send him reeling. She tries to draw back and thrust, hoping to use the lack of distance to her advantage, but he swats the stake away before she can manage to reach skin. It clatters to the floor, splinters tearing open shallow, irritating cuts on her palm, and doing little more than infuriating him.

There’s nowhere to run. The door is just behind her, and behind it a shallow closet, and he’s so close that she can’t dart around, so she steps forward in an effort to neutralize some of the power behind his punches. It puts her dangerously close to those sharp teeth, but even with a system stoked on vampire blood, she’s not going to be able to sustain this pace for long. She needs to end this before he ends her.

She takes a page from Shaddish’s own book and brings her elbow up under his chin. His head snaps back, teeth clicking together loudly, and she uses the moment’s reprieve to push hard against his chest. It buys her another foot away from the door before he charges, putting his shoulder to her chest and driving her backwards. She hits the broken door hard, feeling jagged edges cut into her back deeply enough to draw blood. On instinct, she brings her hands to the back of his neck, holding him down in a clench that allows her to bring her knee up hard into his abdomen. The first strikes true with a solid thud. The second he catches.

It’s enough to throw her off balance, and he takes advantage of the shift in leverage to buck upward, slamming her into the door once again. He doesn’t relinquish his hold and soon she’s slipping, tipping sideways as he continues to draw her captured leg upwards, and she flails out for a handhold. Shredded wood bites painfully into her fingers but she clamps down, struggling to remain upright. For a moment, she thinks it’s enough, but then his free hand is alongside hers and her handhold tears free from the door with a sturdy yank.

She hits the floor hard, her right arm absorbing most of her fall. Their legs tangle together, a mockery of a lover’s embrace, and his forehead butts into her chin as he goes for her neck. With little room to move, she brings her elbow around, catching him just behind the ear. It does little to deter him so she does it again, using the momentum to twist her hips in an effort to throw him off. It puts her back against the door jam and neighboring fragment of still standing wall. She tries to bring her knees up to her chest, gets them as far as his hips, and pushes him away as hard as she can. It jerks him out of range of her jugular but a look at his eyes lets her know that he’s been reduced to a singular, overriding focus.

With a howl of rage, he throws himself at her again. She has just enough time to bring her arm up in front of her, catching the brunt of his mass with her forearm. It’s not enough to stop him and his chin crashes into hers hard enough to drive her head back into the wall behind her. Sheetrock crumbles under the force of the blow, raining down around them and obscuring her vision. Trapped, his weight heavy across her legs and his arms coming up to wrap around her chest like a steel trap, her struggles are reduced to fitful jerks and starts that do nothing to dislodge him. Left with no other option, she snaps her head forward, catching the side of his face as he moves unerringly toward her neck once again. It does more damage to her than it does him, and she feels blood start to flow out over her upper lip to drip thickly down her chin.

There’s no time for introspection about the chain of events that has led her to this fate before she feels the sharp prick of his teeth breaking through her skin.

“You fucking…” she grits out, kicking out as best she can to try and dislodge him but to no avail.

Unnaturally sharp hearing catches the scrape of footsteps a moment before the whistle of air and the heavy, dull thud of an axe head burying into wood. The teeth at her neck clamp down, nearly claiming a chunk of skin, before the creature that was Shaddish pulls back and howls. Erika’s vision is starting to flicker a little, but she sees the shape behind him, a slim shadow with shoulders squared, and smiles faintly.

There’s a wet squelch as Avi puts her boot to Shaddish’s back and wrenches free the axe. His back bows with the motion. Earlier in the day, it would have killed him. Now, he’s on his feet in less than a second, shoulders thrown back and hands clenched into fists. Avi brings the axe down again, this time aiming for the juncture between shoulder and neck, but he sidesteps, heightened senses or instinct driving him just out of its reach. When he spins to face Avi, Erika sees the wound she’s left behind. She’s cleaved deeply into muscle all the way down to bone. The wound is wide, a deep red parting down to white, and gushing blood. She can see the edges already starting to knit themselves together, more slowly than it would if he was anything but an unfed newborn. It’s not enough to kill him, not even enough to do anything more than distract him, and now his attention is squarely on Avi.

Erika struggles to stand, limbs weak. He can’t be allowed to get to Avi. Fully human Avi, with her axe and her bravery, who is nonetheless not a match for his speed and strength.

She kicks out wildly, catching him at his ankle and sweeping his foot from underneath him. It sends him down to his knees and she manages to scramble to a crouch and brace a foot against the crumbling wall as leverage. The flying tackle is anything but graceful. She lands heavily against his back and they sprawl onto the dirty floor. With a burst of strength, she pushes up so that she’s straddling him and brings her fist down against the back of his neck. She does it over and over again, the skin over her knuckles shredding, even as he puts his hands down and begins to push the both of them up off of the floor.

“Get back,” Avi says, but the words don’t register. Erika tightens her thighs into a vice around his sides, slipping her legs down around his waist and crossing them at the ankles, locking herself to him. She continues to bring her fist down, instinct driving her to beat and beat until she kills.

“Erika,” Avi says, the name loud and impatient on her lips. “Move.”

Erika twists around in confusion, not understanding, barely clearing the path of the stake Avi has rescued from the debris. She brings it down hard, both hands starting the arc above her head and slamming down with the full force of her weight. There’s a sharp crack as Avi’s movement jerks to an abrupt halt. It’s enough to penetrate skin and muscle, enough to crack through a rib, but not enough to pierce his heart. Without thought, Erika brings her fists down like a hammer, pounding against the dull end of the stake. Jagged splinters bite into her again. Her hands are coated in blood, a mix of her own and Shaddish’s, and slippery enough so that each blow slides slightly off target.

For a moment, Shaddish’s arms tremble. He drops, Erika following him, thrown off balance enough to need to grab the stake to right herself. A moment later and he’s pushing back up again, though, carrying both their weights even as she continues to pound at the stake. Each blow drives it just a little deeper, but it won’t be enough.

She’s so focused on keeping her hold on Shaddish that she almost misses the movement beside her. The thunk of the axe’s blade into bone breaks into the haze of violence wrapped around her like a cloak and she has just enough wherewithal to tighten her thighs to hold her steady as Shaddish hits the floor hard. Pain shoots through her ankles – they’d be broken under any other circumstances – but she needs the leverage to maintain her grip as Shaddish begins to writhe beneath her. She watches as Avi pulls sharply on the axe, pulling it free from where it’s dug deeply into the back of Shaddish’s neck, and brings it over her head for another full stroke.

This time, the axe severs bone.

Shaddish goes limp beneath her, and Erika allows herself to roll free. She collapses to the floor, vaguely aware of the sound of Avi finishing the job. The axe falls one more time, finally separating Shaddish from his head and digging into the flooring beneath. Finally ending it.

“Avi,” she says, breathless and confused.

Avi extends a hand to her and pulls her to her feet. “Here we are, back at the beginning.”

Erika smiles, even though she’s not quite sure what it means. The smile fades when she remembers the truth of their situation. “Give me the axe,” she says, reaching out expectantly. “This isn’t over.”

She wants to tell Avi to run, to get to safety, but she’s not quite sure how she’s even still standing. She’s covered in blood, a lot of it her own, and the wound on her neck is still bleeding freely. The wood of the axe handle is soon slick with it.

“There’s another vamp,” she says, tightening her grip on the axe lest it slip from her hand. “He’s old. Strong. What do have with you?”

“A crossbow,” Avi says, instantly on alert, “but I dropped it in the other room.”

There’s no real need to be quiet. As old as Fiveash is, as strong as he is, he’s bound to hear their every step. Their every breath. She sees him in every shadow, the gradations between dark and light fading out as her strength continues to bleed out of her. Every muscle is tense and ready and she figures she’s running on adrenalin and fear.

It takes nearly an hour to search every room in the house twice over.

“He’s gone,” Erika admits finally, her voice hoarse. Saying the words seems to sap the remaining strength from her bones and she falls heavily to her knees, the axe clattering to the floor beside her. “He was here, Avi. He… It was him. His fault.”

Outside, the moon is starting to wane.

“Come on,” Avi says, wrapping an arm under Erika’s and pulling her to her feet. Together, they stumble out onto the porch. There, so far away from civilization that the moon paints everything in bright relief, she sees Erika clearly for the first time that night.

“Erika,” she says, easing the other woman down to sit at the top of the steps. She clenches her jaw against recriminations driven by fear and leaves her only long enough to sprint to the truck. She returns with bandages and wraps the wound on Erika’s neck as tightly as she dares. The vampire blood left flowing through her system has been enough to slow the flow to a trickle, but from the way her thermal clings tightly to her side, it’s clear that she’s lost a lot of blood. Sitting there, Avi’s concerned face hovering so close to her own, she grants herself the permission to close her eyes.


	17. Chapter 17

When Erika opens her eyes again, she’s in the truck. She blinks wearily, not quite sure where the time in between has gone and how much of it she’s lost, and catches the flash of fire in the rear view mirror. It hurts her neck to turn but she needs to see it, needs to see that house and all of its contents well on its way to cinders.

“How did you find me?” she asks finally. Her throat is dry and raw and she wonders again what happened when she closed her eyes. She wonders if she’s thirsty, if maybe all the blood still thick and wet against her side was more than she could spare to lose and if she just doesn’t realize yet that she’s dead. If she’s dead, if she closed her eyes and stopped breathing and now she’s back again, then she’s only got so long before the madness takes her over.

“There were signs, auguries, and portents,” Avi says, a hint of bemused resignation in her tone. “I followed them to you.”

She’s clearly so annoyed by it that Erika has to laugh.

“So now you’ve got the sight?”

Avi shrugs.

For a moment, Erika indulges herself. She reaches over, tangling her fingers with Avi’s and squeezing hard. “You have to leave me out here,” she says, forcing the words from deep in the pit of her stomach. They come out heavy when she meant for them to be anything but. She doesn’t want to say them, doesn’t want to leave the comfort of this moment, but she’s not going to put Avi at risk. She’s not going to be that kind of monster.

“And why would I want to do that?”

Erika swallows hard. “The vampire, the other one. The old one. He drank my blood and I drank his.”

Avi’s sharp inhale echoes in the otherwise silent cab.

“I could be…” she stumbles over the words, unable to say them. “I could hurt you, Avi.”

“You could be?” Avi’s fingers tighten their grip, holding Erika’s hand to hers as if the force of her will could cow the possibility into retreat. “Did you die?”

She asks the question much more harshly than she intends. It comes out as an accusation and she sighs, slowing to a stop on the deserted highway.

“Erika,” she says, starting over, “I’m not leaving you here. I’m not abandoning you.”

Erika tries to pull her hand away but can’t. It’s not that she can’t break Avi’s grip. It’s that she doesn’t want to. “I could hurt you,” she says again, and swallows hard. Tears well in her eyes and she turns to look out of the window and at the barren desert, unable to see whatever might be in Avi’s eyes. “I can’t be sure.”

“I can take care of myself.” There’s a hitch in Avi’s voice; it’s soft where Erika expects gruff, a mix of resolute and resigned. “Besides, I let you out of my sight once before, and look how that turned out.”

Despite herself, Erika laughs.

******

Avi finds a motel and within 30 minutes of watching the fire fade away in the distance in the rear view, they’re hunched in front of the door to their room. It’s late and there’s no one out, but the parking lot is lit well enough for any passerby to see enough blood to warrant a call to the authorities. They both breathe easier when they’re inside, the pedestrian furnishings almost alien in their banality in light of the scene they left behind. Erika’s bone tired, muscles weak with the kind of exhaustion that comes with extreme exertion. She’s starting to itch under the sodden fabric of her thermal and jeans, but removing them seems like too much effort.

“Come on,” Avi says, holding out her hand. Erika takes it, lets herself be guided into the small bathroom, and stands patiently as Avi turns on the shower. She raises her arms obediently when Avi tugs at the thermal and tries not to flinch when it hits the small plastic trashcan with a wet thump. When Avi kneels before her, unlacing her boots, she wants to pull her back to her feet. She wants to protest that she’s not worth all of this effort, but there’s a comfort in being cared for that she can’t deny. So she toes out of her boots and lifts her feet free of her jeans, and tries not to think about how close Avi is to bare skin when she slides her panties down over her legs and unclasps her bra. The bandage is the last thing to go once Avi’s assured herself that Erika won’t bleed out if it’s removed, and Erika lets herself be ushered under the warm spray of the shower.

She tilts her head back until the spray hits her square in the face. Her body stings with wounds half-healed, yet another vestige of the vampire’s unwanted legacy. With the adrenalin gone, with her mind free to settle back into the moment, she feels the pain creep in. Her knuckles ache and her hands are raw. The wound to her neck stings and prickles, alien even in the way it aches. Dawn will break with her covered in bruises, assuming Avi doesn’t need to hammer a stake through her heart.

The shower curtain rustles and suddenly there’s a warm body behind her, pressing in close. She startles at the feel of skin on skin and makes to turn, to see if what she wants desperately to be true really is, but Avi’s hands are gentle but firm on her shoulders, holding her still. The possibility makes her heart race. It leaves her so keyed up that she startles yet again when Avi’s fingers start to work through her wet hair. She doesn’t know where Avi got the shampoo, but it smells of sharp citrus. It cuts through the coppery tang of blood, through the dry must of powdered sheetrock and decades old dust.

She sinks into the touch.

It takes her a moment to register Avi’s soapy hands for what they are when they settle on her shoulders. There’d be a point when she’d be left to her own devices, she’s assumed, but no. Avi’s hands are smoothing down her arms, down the curve of her back, and along her sides. They’re covering every inch of skin until the water runs pink, then clear, and when she’s satisfied, and only then, is Erika allowed to turn.

Avi’s eyes are tracing over her face, and Erika doesn’t want to know what she sees. The marks associated with all of the hurts she’s beginning to feel can’t be pretty, and suddenly she wants to turn away again. She wants a moment that’s pure and clean, the kind that isn’t afforded to her often.

“I could have lost you,” Avi says, like it still might be true. Her hands are cupping Erika’s face, thumbs smoothing over her cheekbones, creating the kind of anxious tension that makes every muscle in Erika’s body tighten. She doesn’t know what comes next. She knows what she wants, what she hopes for, but there’s only so many times she can ask.

So instead she asks, “What happened to your cast?”

“Cut it off,” Avi says with the hint of a smile. “Too hard to hold a crossbow with it on.”

“You should probably get that taken care of.”

Avi edges closer. Close enough for skin to brush against skin, and Erika closes her eyes and breathes in deeply. “You’re one to talk.”

She waits, heart racing, for a kiss that doesn’t come. “Come on,” Avi says, leaning past her to shut off the water. “Let’s get you dried off.”

It’s a bittersweet torture, the way Avi’s hands linger. The room beyond is cold after the steam of the shower, and she shivers as Avi pushes her down onto the bed, mostly dry but still naked. She wants to follow Avi with her eyes, to drink in the sight of all that delicious flesh before it’s hidden away again, but it feels like an intrusion. Instead, she stares down at her hands, at swollen knuckles and cuts already hardened by scabs.

She looks up when Avi leans over her, dropping clean bandages on the bed beside her. “We have to see to this,” she says, fingers soft against the angry skin along the edges of the ragged bite, and Erika gasps. It’s sensitive, something more than just pain, and she doesn’t want to think about why or what it might mean.

She moves beyond startled when Avi plants a knee on either side of her thighs, straddling her even as she reaches for the bandages. Her skin is burning hot, burning through the chill that’s settled over Erika. Soft and still a hint damp beneath the hands that instinctively find Avi’s hips.

“When I got the call that you’d gone missing,” she says, already tending to the wound, “I thought about all the time I wasted being afraid. I thought about the possibility that I’d missed my chance, about how I’d been too stubborn and too scared and now it was going to be too late.” She shifts, settling in closer so that their hips meet and breasts brush with every slight movement and Erika has to stifle a whimper. “I’ve been closed off for a long time. I could say I was too used to being alone to think I could be anything else, but that would be a lie. You were right there in front of me, and I fought it.”

Erika nods. Swallows. If there’s one thing she’s learned in the past few days, it’s the urgency of the moment. “I’m falling in love with you,” she says, cutting through to the heart of the matter. She doesn’t need Avi’s apologies, her equivocations or justifications. What she needs is to know she’s not alone in this.

Avi’s smile is shy. She nods shallowly and her smile deepens. “Yeah,” she says, and closes the distance between them. It’s a soft kiss, a reassurance that things are going to be alright. It’s enough for Erika to forget, for just a moment, pain and fear and a certainty that she was going to die. Avi’s arms come up to rest on her shoulders, deepening the kiss slowly. She’s touching Erika like she’s worried she might break, so light as to be teasing, and for a moment, Erika feels tears well up in her eyes. It’s the moment, true, but also the notion that Avi might find her someone worth protecting. Does find her someone worth protecting, and if she hadn’t, Erika would still be back in that house, dead, dying, or worse.

She slides her palms up Avi’s back, ignoring the sting of raw skin protesting the pressure. In response, Avi lets her head fall back and for a moment, all she can see is the smooth skin of her neck there for the taking. It makes it almost a test when she forces herself to move, to bring her lips to flesh so warm and soft that her first instinct is to leave her mark. Instead, she uses teeth, tongue, and suction in ways that make Avi moan and clutch tightly at her still wet hair. For a fleeting moment, she thinks about that first kiss so very long ago and the way she’d obsessed over it for months. She’d run it over again and again in her mind’s eye, remembering Avi’s soft, full lips and the way her own heart had been beating so very, very fast.

Fast like it is now as she traces a line from the hollow of Avi’s throat to the space between her breasts. Avi urges her on, arching her back and hissing when Erika’s teeth bite down gently on her nipple. She lingers, self-indulgent, until Avi’s squirming against her, fingers wrapped tightly in her hair and Erika can feel the way she’s making Avi feel in the wetness pressed tight to her belly.

When she finally kisses her way back up Avi’s chest to bring their lips together again, there’s nothing leisurely about it. It’s the vanguard of a shift from slow to serious, full of nipping teeth and the bold swipe of tongues, and just as Erika tenses to flip them over, Avi pulls away. She plants her hands on the mattress and uses the leverage to slide off of Erika’s lap and down onto her knees, and Erika’s legs part instinctively. Avi takes advantage, fitting neatly into the vee; she runs her hands along Erika’s upper thighs and over the curve where thigh meets hip, declaring her intentions almost at the same time as she leans forward and draws her tongue through Erika’s wetness in a more definitive statement.

Erika cries out, and soon she’s breathless. Avi’s drawing her tongue in long, broad strokes over Erika’s clit and Erika’s arms fail her, sending her sprawling back onto the mattress. Already sore muscles tighten as the flick of Avi’s tongue transitions into a kind of milking suction that has Erika trembling. She curls up as best she can because she needs to see. This is something she wants to remember, the way Avi looks between her legs, eyes closed and cheeks hollowed. She wants to remember the heavily lidded gaze pinning her in place and the way Avi’s hands look splayed out against her belly, casually possessive.

Her orgasm leaves her panting and boneless.

After, Avi climbs up onto the bed, careful to keep her weight from fully falling on Erika, and kisses her. Erika’s sliding her hand down Avi’s abdomen, desperate to finally touch her, when Avi thwarts her again. She catches the hand and brings it between them, brushing her thumb over battered and bruised knuckles, before pressing it firmly into the mattress above Erika’s head. Instead of following the script Erika has running through her head like a movie, of Avi beneath her, fingers digging into her shoulders as Erika slips inside of her, she’s instead moving to her knees and sliding along Erika’s inner thigh until they’re pressed together. Still sensitive, Erika gasps, an unintentional jerk upwards of her hips enough to have her whimpering. Above her, Avi leans back, her good hand on the mattress for balance, and begins to roll her hips in short, fluid thrusts that leave them both breathless.

Erika thinks maybe the sight alone will be enough to get her off again, the way Avi settles in after a moment and commences to shift into long, slow thrusts like she has all the time in the world. She has one hand on Avi’s thigh and the other above her head, braced against the headboard. It’s a shame, she thinks, that she’s spent the last few days either tied down or beaten up, because otherwise, she might be able to do more than just try to keep up as Avi’s hips begin to snap into hers. But she has, so it’s okay that she focuses instead on surprising serpentine arc of Avi’s back, on the way her muscles flex and shift as she moves, and on the perfect curve of her breasts.

She’s on the edge of her second orgasm, heart racing, when Avi bites down hard on her lower lip and comes with low, breathy moan that pushes her over.

Exhaustion hits with a sudden vengeance that leaves her struggling to stay lucid for long enough to savor the way it feels when Avi brushes a kiss against her lips. She wants to say something but the perfect words elude her, so she settles for curling in around Avi and pressing a sleepy kiss to her shoulder. In seconds, she’s asleep, pressed as tightly to Avi as she can get.

******

Avi wakes to a cold, empty bed and the faint light of dawn seeping through the thick motel curtains. She listens for sounds of movement but hears none and something about the stillness of the air lets her know that she’s alone. Her duffle’s been rifled through, neatly packed clothes now messy, and she snags a sweatshirt and pair of jeans and steps into her boots. The laces click on the floor as she walks and she’s unnaturally calm. There are a couple of possibilities, but as long as she can avoid thinking about any of them in depth, none of them are true.

The chill cuts into her despite her sweatshirt as soon as she opens the door. The parking lot is limned with frost that crunches beneath her boots as she circles the truck. She lets out a breath she hasn’t realized she was holding when she sees messy blonde hair, and she forces herself to move slowly and deliberately.

“Hey,” she says, hands stuffed deeply into her pockets.

Erika, sitting with her legs dangling off of the tailgate, eyes closed and face tilted up to the slowly rising sun, takes in a deep, steadying breath.

“Hey,” she echoes as Avi slips up onto the tailgate beside her. Her eyes flutter open and she grins widely, never looking away from the eastern sky. “I had to be sure.”

Avi slides closer, catching Erika’s hand in her own. She ignores the cold and the memory of that moment of fear that had seized her when she’d woken up alone and instead focuses on the heat radiating off of the body beside her. She doesn’t think about what would have happened had she emerged to the sight of smoke and ash, because it doesn’t bear contemplating.

“I thought, what if I’m a monster and I don’t even know?” Erika continues, and swallows hard. For the first time since Avi found her watching the sunrise, she looks over at her. “I wasn’t going to leave you responsible for that.”

Avi doesn’t know what to say to that.

Aware of the weight of the moment, Erika smiles. As smiles go, it’s a weak one, but it takes away some of the darkness gathering in Avi’s eyes. “I don’t think I thanked you,” she says, her smile turning rueful.

“Nothing to thank me for.”

Erika finds a certain comfort in Avi’s stubbornness.

“Well, I’m doing it anyway.” She thinks again of the moment when she’d accepted the inevitability of death, with Shaddish heavy on top of her and his teeth cutting into her neck and doubts she’ll ever forget what it felt like. “You’re kind of stuck with me now.”

Avi shrugs. “I’ve had worse things happen to me.”

“I’ve caused most of them.” Erika’s grin finally edges into something real. It fades away again a moment later when all of the things they need to talk about return to her. “We knew him, that vamp we killed.”

“I know,” Avi says softly.

“He was a hunter.” The cold she’s been ignoring suddenly bores into her. “Let’s go inside. We need to talk.”

She tells Avi everything and watches as the betrayal on her face is swept into rage.

“He’s the one who called Daddy with the tip about the vampire clan,” she says, anger making the words strained. The truth comes to her with crushing force. “He set him up.”

“He did a lot of that.”

Erika’s had a little time to consider what she’s learned. She wonders how long Shaddish held on to the information about the wendigo before he gave it to her father. Maybe he waited until the conditions would be just bad enough to make mistakes more likely but not bad enough to keep them from tracking down the creature. Either way, he had to have known that her father wouldn’t be able to stay away, not with his history. Maybe Shaddish hadn’t known what would happen, exactly, but maybe he had calculated the odds and counted himself on the winning side. She wonders how many others had fallen because of him and finds the notion that he had gone to his death without accounting for them untenable.

There’s still Fiveash to account for, and maybe there’ll be some closure there, but it’s a small comfort.

“So, what do we do now?” she asks, indulging in a fleeting yearning for a life lived without the complications her chosen path has wrought.

Avi leans in close as if she, too, needs to secure a bit of comfort. “I think we go home for a little while.”

“Home?” Erika refuses to be embarrassed by the hope wrapped up in that word.

It’s not the kind of thing that can be forgotten, but for the moment, Avi decides it’s the kind of thing she needs to set aside. Reality will be there waiting on them when they’re healed and rested, when their spirits are strong enough to take the beatings likely to come their way once again. Until then, she wants home and Erika and time to luxuriate in them both. She wants to have something worth fighting for.

“Yeah,” she says, leaning over the small table around which they’re situated to give Erika a kiss. The holidays are coming up, and Avi wants to see Erika sitting at the table with the rest of her family, smiling and laughing and blushing when the inevitable teasing gets to be too much. She wants nights spent in a bed that’s their own, in a room full of furniture that’s seen her family through generations, with a sense of connectedness that’s as far away from cheap motel rooms as is possible to be. Most of all, she wants to share with Erika the sense of peace she suspects will come with settling back into her roots without the usual reservations she shoulders. “Home.”


End file.
